Official figures show that although the number of people receiving the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) fell in September, there was an increase in the final week of the month for the first time since the beginning of May.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) said 217,142 people were receiving the payment in the week ending 27 September, up 10,801 from the previous week.

The September figure represents a 7,814 fall compared with August, but numbers have begun to creep up again in line with tighter COVID-19 restrictions in some areas of the country.

Subsidy scheme

The number of people on the traditional Live Register in September rose by 1,600 from August to stand at 215,400.

The CSO has been attempting to provide a broader picture of the effects of COVID-19 on the labour market by publishing PUP and Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) figures with the Live Register releases.

But the statistics body says it does not yet have access to data from the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS), which replaced the TWSS at the start of September.

It says it is working with Revenue to get access to these figures and will start providing aggregates of the numbers benefiting from the scheme once the data are available.