Ms Helen Faughnan:

I might start with the question on the mortgage interest supplement. Any kind of major change to the mortgage interest supplement, such as reducing the full-time work condition or changing the means test, would have to be considered in a budgetary context. In respect of reducing the referral back to the lenders from 12 months to six months, for somebody to engage and comply with the forbearance arrangements, a six-month period is quite short. This is effectively State money subventing the lenders and whether this is the best use of that money is a policy consideration. We will wait to see the outcomes for the people who have come through the forbearance process, and whether they have engaged with the lenders, whether solutions have been put in place for them, whether they are meeting them and so on. That will take a couple of months or more to wash through, and may possibly take 12 months. However, we will engage on that issue.

The reason for the setting up of JobsPlus was the feedback from employers that the employer PRSI scheme, which had been set up in 2010 under the Revenue Job Assist scheme, which itself had been running since 1998, was not working. It was too cumbersome and was difficult for employers to operate. We took account of all that feedback and came up with a simpler scheme, JobsPlus. The feedback from the employers with whom we are engaging is extremely positive and the take-up from 2,000 employers at the moment is showing that. We will be keeping in touch with them and, as our staff are out and about meeting the employers, we will be taking the feedback. We are engaging with the small and medium business associations to get feedback on the scheme.

The €50 extra for the JobBridge scheme was decided at the time it was set up, and it has been working. Again, we are into budgetary constraints, because the funding for JobsPlus had to be met from within the resources of our own Department. The cost of providing an extra €20 per participant naturally has a budgetary context. We must take into consideration the personal rate on the live register. Three quarters of those on the live register are single, or they may have a spouse or a partner who is working. Fifty three percent of people on the live register receive less than the maximum personal weekly rate, so coming up to €208 per week is an increase for them. They have a financial incentive to take up that piece of work, and significant numbers on the live register do take up the various positions. In summary, there are just under 79,000 placements for all the various employment support initiatives that we have. I will circulate to committee members the breakdown of the various schemes and the number of recipients on them.

In respect of the point made about the lack of vision, a huge amount of work has been done in our Department. Members are aware that 1,000 staff came to us from the community welfare service and approximately 700 staff from the former FÁS organisation came into our Department as well. In addition to making weekly and daily payments, we are concentrating on activating the unemployed. We have a commitment to redeploy up to 300 staff from our divisional units into activation by the end of the year. We have identified 160 staff to train as case officers to engage with the unemployed. We will have up to 300 case officers by the end of the year. That is a huge focus. We also have local employment services which supplement our engagement with the unemployed.

In response to the question about the engineer on one and a half times the minimum wage, that is an issue, as is the concern that they are losing benefits. There is much miscommunication out there. Among the 50 action plans coming out of Pathways to Work, we are currently developing a "better off in work" module. It will be online and people will be able to log on. It is like a pension calculator whereby people can feed in their circumstances to get an indication of whether they are better off in work on an income of X. That will be going to trial and we hope to have it online by the end of the year or early next year.

A person on a medical card who takes up employment can retain the medical card for three years. A person with children who goes into low-paid work that is more than 19 hours per week can avail of family income supplement. We have tapering-off arrangements for rent supplement. If somebody is regarded as RAS-eligible after 18 months, he or she can retain the rent supplement.