Ms Majella Fitzpatrick:

From IBEC's perspective, there has certainly been a greater desire to engage more on a practical level about what needs to be done to fix some matters, but that has transpired in a piecemeal way. As well as the issue of evidence-based policy, of which Mr. O'Brien spoke, there is a requirement to have a better whole-of-Government approach to some of these issues. Departments, Ministers and policy makers are anxious to enhance matters but then, due to a lack of communication and the lack of a whole-of-Government approach, one Department could do something that contradicts what another is trying to do. This is difficult in any organisation, not least one as big as the Government. There is that element - the lack of a whole-of-Government approach.

Many people have concerns about the considerable and entirely unacceptable level of unemployment. There are many useful employment schemes, aside from some - for example, the employment incentive and investment scheme, EIIS - that need a bit of work. We have tried to communicate this to our members, because employers simply do not know about them. They do not know about them because, coming back to a whole-of-Government approach, the schemes are spread over different Departments and it is impossible to get a sense of what is available and how it can be useful to the employer. There is a communications issue and, often, there is an issue of complexity. Things need to be simplified. It is not rocket science. We have been talking about it for a couple of years, certainly in these meetings. If there was a central portal to which companies could go, depending on their size, sector or whatever, to find the schemes that are most relevant to them and be able to work out simply how they would benefit from or participate in such schemes, it would have a significant positive impact on unemployment that cannot be underestimated. In the case of small business, as I am sure Mr. Noonan and Ms McNally would agree, companies do not have the time nor the resources to chase after such things.