Just over three job losses a day in Offaly during March

The latest figures released by the Department of Trade and Enterprise show that a total of 102 people were made redundant in Offaly during March. This was an average of 3.2 job losses every day and an increase of 122% on the figure for the same month last year. The figure was even worse for the county"s constituency partner, Laois, where the percentage increase was 444%. Overall there was a total of 350 redundancies every day nationwide last month. The figures confirm that over half (54%) the redundancies were in construction and manufacturing. However, 35% of job losses were in the services sector and females now account for 29% of redundancies, confirming that job losses continue to be spread throughout the whole economy. According to Fine Gael Cllr Molly Buckley there are 3,273 people signing on for Social Welfare in Tullamore, and increasing by 50 people a week. 'I want to see an Outreach Third Level Education facility. I want to see more recreational facilities for our young people, our town park, playground and swimming pool and leisure centre are excellent,' said Cllr Buckley. 'Good recreational facilities for our young people, both sporting and leisure, are vital and will combat the anti-social behaviour which exists. I want to see a Community Arts Centre and, hopefully, we will get this in the not too distant future.' ISME, the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, described the level of redundancies as "horrendous" and said the figure is continuing to soar. 'If the trend continues, we could potentially be looking at 100,000 additional redundancies in 2009, over twice the rate in 2008,' said Mark Fielding, ISME Chief Executive. He said that measures to address the cost of labour and specific targeted funding for labour intensive businesses are urgently required including PRSI relief in next week"s budget.