Mr. Niall Egan:

Regarding the personal development plan and the issue about qualified people and the case officers, there are approximately 530 case officers. The majority of those are former FÁS employment service officers and many of them would have already had a qualification from NUI Maynooth in a guidance field, so some have experience. We significantly increased the number of case officers over the last two years by 300. They all received additional training and the Department is in the process of continuously developing training programmes for our staff. There is a particular focus on case officers in that regard. They might not have the qualifications that their other colleagues have from NUI Maynooth, but they have access to training.

It is important to be up-front about it as well. The focus of the Department is not guidance in terms of education. Obviously, Senator Craughwell was connected with an ETB and the ETB adult education guidance officers are excellent in that respect. We have a slightly different focus. It is not education per seof a holistic nature, but education and training with the aim of trying to progress somebody into employment. That is our focus. We want to give them the supports so they can go off and become financially independent. The transitional payment is giving them that period of time to help themselves if they are in a position to do so.

The flexibility of provision is obviously a long standing issue. SOLAS and the ETBs already run a great deal of flexible provision. I am aware that SOLAS, in particular, runs many online courses and part-time evening courses. I am regularly in consultation with lone parent groups and they make the points that have been made here. It is a difficult nut to crack. Some of our former training centres, now ETBs, had a nine-to-five attitude to a large extent. Part of that was for very good reasons. It was trying to get the trainee ready for work and to get them disciplined, but that does not always suit lone parents. It is an issue we will be discussing further into the future. However, there is some online and part-time provision that might be suitable for many lone parents. We also provide child care supports that are tied in with ETB provision, so if it was nine-to-five they would be able to have a child care place. Again, however, that depends on whether a place is available and whether it matches if the child is of school going age or younger.

I will not disagree about the name of the jobseeker's transitional arrangement. Training allowance is an interesting suggestion. The name came from the Department, probably because it was so close. We are bringing people from the one-parent family payment and putting them on a jobseeker's payment, but we want to make it not seem like the jobseeker's payment so there was not too much imagination given to it. It is an interesting idea that we can think about. It is a somewhat clunky creation, to be honest.

Senator Moloney asked about feedback from people who have already gone through the process. In each of the last two months of July there has been an increase in new FIS recipients, which is very positive from our perspective. It is what we are trying to achieve. We have engaged with virtually all of those people through the case officer. Unfortunately, we are in the process of developing a new active case management system that will not be up and running until later this year. The way we have done it up to this point is not perfect for getting output information. They have all been accessed and we have started to collate that. I have data on it. Approximately 2,000 people have gone through an engagement process and they are engaged, but the information we have at present is not as good as it will be in the future. This new system will be up and running in time for the July cohort and we will start engaging with those parents from September. By the end of the year we will engage with all of them. That is the Department's plan.

The Chairman asked about the €500 grant we provide. It is not my area but I know it is called the technical employment support grant. I do not think there is flexibility with it but I will check that with colleagues in the Department and refer back to the clerk with data and information on it.