Unemployed construction workers have been admitted to psychiatric care due to their "despair" over welfare pay, according to a newspaper report.

Former self-employed tradesmen such as carpenters, tilers, plumbers and electricians are not qualifying automatically for unemployment benefit because they had set up their own companies, according to the Irish Independent.

As a result, they are forced to wait up to four months for their cases to be processed without any income.

Some find they are not entitled to jobseeker's allowance because their wives or partners are working - which groups representing the unemployed said came as a major shock to them. And in other cases, social welfare staff had wrongly told them that they must sell their construction equipment to qualify for a means-tested jobseeker's allowance payment.

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Fine Gael Longford Westmeath TD James Bannon has claimed that several unemployed workers who had been "in and out" of St Loman's psychiatric hospital in Mullingar had contacted him.

"That's how serious the situation is - and a lot more than people realise," he said.

"You see the desperation of their cases."

Mr Bannon has called on the Department of Social Protection to take account of the desperation of the unemployed construction workers' situation.

The Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed (INOU) head of policy Brid O'Brien said a number of social welfare offices had incorrectly given advice to the self-employed construction workers that they needed to sell their equipment to qualify for jobseeker's allowance.

"The circular coming from the department is not advocating any such development at all," she said.

"It's something that we feel needs to be addressed by the department - there seems to be confusion on the ground."

According to Ms O'Brien, the biggest shock for self-employed male workers was that they were not entitled to any jobseeker's allowance payment if their wife or partner had a full-time job.

The Department of Social Protection said it did not have figures on how many formerly self-employed construction workers had been refused a social welfare payment, but confirmed that the waiting time for those applying for a means-tested jobseeker's benefit payment was currently seven weeks.

(NS/BMcC)