Mr. John McKeon:

On the issue of the guarantee, I absolutely agree the word "guarantee" has a meaning in English which maybe some of our European colleagues did not quite appreciate. We will have to take a realistic approach to our implementation plan, given the amount of resources we have and the kind of resources which will be available. We will ensure that whatever we say, we can guarantee it will happen. The European Union has recognised that implementation of the plan will have to be phased in countries which are particularly challenged from a fiscal and budgetary position. We will have to take that approach. That is one of the things we have asked the OECD. We have asked how we should phase our roll out. If a four month guarantee is the ultimate objective, where do we start?

Do we start with a particular cohort and say, for that cohort it is four months or do we start a nine-month guarantee and work back towards four? We have asked them to come up with options and to give us the best advice on that but whatever we do, we want to stand behind the word "guarantee". This is very important.

There were a number of questions about the Ballymun pilot scheme. Originally the intention in Europe was that the pilot schemes would run for a year and then at the end of that year, we would have the youth guarantee. In practice, however, they did not give us the money to run the pilot scheme until a year after they said they would so we are now in a situation that the scheme in Ballymun is less of a pilot than a learn-as-you-go one. We must be realistic about that now.

On the question of the register, we are looking at setting one up. We currently have a website, www.jobsireland.ie, with some of the functionality described earlier. We are looking at developing that further and hope to do so in the coming year to allow for the possibility of matching jobseekers' capabilities to available jobs, on an anonymous basis.

A question was asked about the number of young people currently on schemes and how they are tracked and I will ask Mr. Corcoran to respond to that question in a moment. Regarding the conditionality issue, the Government policy on all activation is a rights and responsibilities one. In other words, people have a right to get support from the State but they also have a responsibility to engage with the State. We will be carrying that principle through. In Ms Horgan's example, there was not as much conditionality as it might have seemed because Mammy was there in the background, kicking people out of bed in the morning. Sometimes, conditionality is needed and purely voluntary schemes can be too soft. If we are going to spend money, we want to make sure that people will get work at the end. We will not be doing anything foolish and that is where the good guidance counsellors, career officers and facilitators come in. We will not be directing people to schemes that are obviously not suitable for them. That is not our intention at all. However, where a case officer identifies an intervention that would seem to be appropriate for a person, we would expect that person to work with that intervention or have a very good reason not to.

Mr. Corcoran will now deal with the question about young people on schemes and how we measure progress.