Mr. Chris Kane:

It is difficult to explain because of the time lag with JobPath. The initial engagement JobPath is for one year. If somebody gains employment during that year they can have in-work support for a further year, and job sustainment fees are paid. With this two-year cycle it is very difficult to take a snapshot and evaluate the state of the programme.

I will refer briefly to the overall cost, including registration fees and job sustainment fees. Given that the job sustainment fees are paid at 13-week intervals, those outgoing payments could reflect one individual and one job. It is difficult to tease that out.

The Chairman asked about metrics. The significant time lag of the published reports is because of the amount of time for which people are involved and over which the job sustainment fees are paid. The delay allows time for some service users to progress right through the service. We have other metrics that we use and report to the Department of Public Expenditure ad Reform. We can certainly look at that data and try to produce an accurate picture that is fair to the contractors. I note that we pay a lot of fees a significant period after they accrue. It is very important to us in managing the payments system that there is evidence that a service user is in full-time, sustained employment. It may take some time for the contractor to produce that evidence to the satisfaction of the Department.

There are time lags and it takes a significant amount of time to build up the information to get an accurate picture. Despite individual cases we have heard, surveys show that customer satisfaction is very high and complaints are very low, with just 500 out of 151,000. Overall, it is a positive picture.