EMPLOYERS are struggling to fill vacancies paying as much as €15 an hour – because many on state benefits earn more money by turning them down, it is reported.

The Irish Daily Mail reports that documents leaked from the state’s business advisory board Forfás show that a couple, both of whom are unemployed, receive more money by claiming the dole than they would on the minimum wage.

The paper says the problem of over-generous welfare payments – which the government is under pressure to tackle in the forthcoming Budget – has become so endemic that many employers with the ability to create vacancies are finding it difficult to fill them, as the pay on offer is less than the state benefits.

In some cases, vacant jobs are offering up to €15 an hour – compared to the national minimum wage of €8.65.

An unemployed couple with two children, the documents contend, can claim €19,800 very year through various welfare entitlements such as jobseeker’s allowance, rent allowance, child benefit, and so on. If one person in that family was to take up a job earning the minimum wage, however, that amount would fall to under €18,000.

The newspaper’s own stats suggest that an unemployed couple with three children would earn an overall annual total – including fuel allowances and rent allowance – of up to €40,223 a year. They would need to earn €53,000 in regular taxable income to match this amount.

The paper quotes enterprise minister Batt O’Keeffe as yesterday giving ‘the clearest indication yet’ that the issue of overgenerous benefits and disproportion between welfare payments and market pay rates – including, it suggests, cutting jobseeker’s allowance and other unemployment-related payments – would be addressed in the Budget.