Updated at 1.30pm

LIVE REGISTER FIGURES published today have confirmed a slight fall in the number of those signing on as the government expects to publish key Exchequer figures ahead of the Budget in less than two weeks time.

The Exchequer statement for the end of September will be published later this afternoon with the figures to play a key part in determining the scale of the Budget adjustment that the government will announce on 15 October.

Politically Labour is pushing for an adjustment of less than €3.1 billion but the Exchequer figures – which record how much the government has raised in taxation – will be key to determining just how much of a Budget cut we can expect.

Earlier today, the Central Statistics Office published Live Register figures which recorded a decrease of 26,600 month-on-month. When seasonally adjusted to allow for factors like students returning to college, this shows the register down 1,800 in September when compared to August.

This number of those signing on is down 20,665 in the past year, with today’s figures to confirming the 15th month in a row that there has been a decrease in the numbers on the Live Register.

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