Welfare services involved with the family of registered sex offender Arthur McElhill, who killed himself and his family when he set fire to their Omagh home, were guilty of a series of failings, an investigation into the deaths found today.

THE number of offenders on the sex register has trebled to 942 in the last three years, while in the North the figure is 700.

The number of sex offenders living in the North has risen by 15% to nearly 700 in the last year.