There were 5,417 redundancies in March, according to figures released yesterday by the Department of Social Protection. So far in this year, 13,404 jobs have been lost under the department’s redundancy scheme, down almost 24 per cent on the same period last year.

The services sector took the brunt of the job losses in March, with 2,938 redundancies in communications, transport, financial and other services during the month. There were 1,130 manufacturing redundancies and 937 redundancies from the building and civil engineering sector.