Live register figures soar

There is no good news to be gleaned from July's Live Register as the numbers on the social service's book passed the 10,000 mark and almost half of that figure are from the Mullingar area.Nationwide the figure has soared to 340,323 with number of females on the register continuing to rise at a higher rate than their male counterparts.In the Midlands as a whole numbers on the Live Register have reached 32,000 which is close on double the figure for July 2008. In the last month alone 1,260 more people have registered as unemployed in the Midlands area.Figures for Westmeath show that Mullingar has been harder hit than Athlone with almost 1,000 more people are unemployed in the area. The unemployed figure for Castlepollard has also doubled since last year with 1,307 registered for benefit as opposed to 656 at this time in 2008.Overall County Meath has fared worst of all in the last few weeks as an increase of 5.8 per cent in numbers signing on was recorded in just one month.