Mr. Paul O'Toole:

When the ETBs were established, they were, obviously, an amalgamation of VECs. This is my understanding rather than detailed knowledge. VECs developed over time and the nature of their specific provision in each VEC grew up based on local considerations. Some might have a Youthreach centre and some might have a PLC college or whatever. The distribution of PLC places is reflected in our contribution to them. There is an overall cap on places in place. They are distributed largely in proportion to the existing PLC colleges - in other words, the colleges exist. They provide the PLC places and we are one portion of their funding. My answer in the round is that there is an historical network of various facilities around ETBs which grew up over time within each VEC and now ETB.

That is the as-is situation. Going forward, we are systematically evaluating each of those major programmes, using a socio-economic model. We are looking at the current state of those programmes and how they might be approved going forward. The big-ticket one is the PLC. We have completed our review of that and we had objective independent economic advice in doing so. We have proposed a series of improvements - a programme of improvements - to the Department of Education and Skills. We would hope, on getting that approval, to move progressively towards, if one likes, ensuring the PLC provision is delivering.

A simple way of looking at it is as follows. I am from County Wicklow. There is no training centre in County Wicklow, but there is one in Loughlinstown and it might serve a bigger catchment than in a particular area. It is a similar picture on Youthreach. We are currently evaluating the Youthreach programme with exactly the same lens on it - how we can make sure these programmes are optimised for the future. We are in process with that at the moment. We will bring forward whatever recommendations we have in due course for policy decisions with the Department.