Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

I am certainly aware of criticisms made about the pace of delivery of Intreo services. However, I would make two distinctions. First, the Intreo service is about integrating the service provision. It is about bringing together the community welfare service, the employment services and the income support services, and being able to deal with somebody in a holistic way. There are elements of that service in terms of integrated decision making and customer profiling, and, certainly, we can take the first steps of activation even in advance of physical changes of infrastructure, and we are doing that - hence the reference to the 28 offices and the fact we will be rolling out the service elements of Intreo to all our local offices by the end of the year.

There is a longer lead-in time where we need to change the physical infrastructure. In some cases, we have to relocate staff, acquire new offices, close down certain offices and bring staff together in a new configuration to try to make sense of customer engagement. We are working very closely with the OPW to deliver that.

We work very closely with the INOU and talk to its representatives very regularly in regard to its experience with us. Certainly, the INOU would wish us to be able to progress more quickly but, generally, where we have the integrated service in place, there is very good feedback from the recipients of that service.