There has been another fall in the number of people signing on the Live Register. New figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show the seasonally adjusted total fell by 3,700 in October to just under 410,000.

The rate of unemployment has also fallen as a result to 13.2%. This compares to 14.2% back in October 2012.

In unadjusted terms, there were 396,512 people signing on the Live Register in October, which is a fall of 23,660. This is the first month since May 2009 that the unadjusted total has been below 400,000.

The CSO says 46% of those on the dole are in long-term unemployment who have been out of work for more than 12 months. In this group, the number of long-term male claimants dropped by 7,457 - while women in this category grew by 1,741.

This graph shows the number of long-term unemployed 

Meanwhile more generally, new Eurostat figures show over 19 million people are unemployed in the Eurozone area. The data shows the jobless rate in the single currency economic bloc is 12.2%..

Unemployment across the 28 EU-member states stands at 11% which means almost 27 million people are out of work.

The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.9%), Germany (5.2%) and Luxembourg (5.9%), and the highest were seen in Greece (27.6% in July 2013) and Spain (26.6%).

In September, 3.5 million young people (those under-25) were unemployed in the Euro area. This means that just over 24% of youth in the Eurozone were out of work last month.

The Social Protection Minister Joan Burton told Lunchtime here on Newstalk her priority is to retrain those who are out of work.