Mr. Paul Sweeney:

I wish to echo something Mr. O'Connell said about public procurements and the lowest tender. A section in our report this year was inserted towards the end. A group of unions in construction are perturbed with some of the practices that basically amount to moneys going out of the country. Outsiders are coming in bidding very low and then ignoring all labour standards and not paying tax. Frankly, they are fly-by-night cowboys. We really need people who are giving tenders in Ireland to think more creatively about it because it is a serious problem.

On labour market activation, I agree with Mr. O'Brien that the key problem is lack of demand. Looking at the supply side on activation, a lot more could be done.

We were nervous about JobBridge but it seems to be working well and we are reasonably happy with that. It is one of those things that has been very well implemented. We hope that we get the real jobs for people at the end of it.

One of the points in our submission is that activation requires an intense level of quality service from State agencies. The OECD has been rightly critical of the way we have dealt with labour market activation in the past. We need to do a lot more.

We also say in the submission that there should be many more apprenticeship systems. They seem to be dying out but a modern apprenticeship system is a great way of linking people who are not in employment or education and binding them to the workplace. We have suggested that there should be apprenticeships in catering, hospitality, commerce and logistics as well as the traditional areas. They can be flexible systems. Hopefully, with the new State agencies, including SOLAS, it is an area in which there can be progress.