Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

It is not a random sample but I have no doubt there are people representing each of the different cohorts on the live register because we have not got Intreo services rolled out as yet. When someone initially comes to make a claim, we profile them based on a model developed with the ESRI several years ago to establish their probability of exit from the live register. There are some who sign on who we would expect to be short-term customers of ours who will move on to other employment on their own steam. For others, they are more vulnerable and for others again, there are underlying issues which may have to be dealt with in order to allow them move into a different employment sector. The profiling scores them and gives them a probability of exit score.

Our focus in the Intreo service will be on those who have a low probability of exit, in other words those in most need of support, and then there are those in medium need of support and then those of a low need of support. We will only actively engage with the latter category if they stay on our books longer than we would have otherwise expected them to.

Obviously we have another dimension in the significant number of customers who are long-term unemployed for whom we do not have this profile information. We are hoping to address this matter this year. It will give us the data to be able engage with the current stock of long-term unemployed. I know that description sounds awful but it is about the people who have been on the live register for some considerable time and how can we assist them in labour activation and to progress off the live register.