Mr. Larry O'Neill:

JobPath came into its own in 2015 but when the decision was made in 2011 unemployment was at 16.5%. Perhaps the troika had something to do with the decision. One could understand the reaction to it. There was a correlation between JobPath ramping up and referrals to our organisations in certain parts of the country falling dramatically. It would have been helpful to have a more consistent level of referrals across the country. We do not currently offer our services country wide but we could have expanded in that regard. The partnership companies that do not run local employment services tried to provide that service in different ways and perhaps those resources could be enhanced to give us a national profile. My area did not suffer from a lack of referrals but in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, for example, referrals to Tús from 2015 dropped from 722 to 261 while JobPath was ramping up and there was a similar fall in referrals to local employment services there. Figures for last year indicate that local employment services were contracted for 20,050 referrals and received 15,900, which is a 20% failure in referrals. If those referrals which went to a scheme such as JobPath had been available to us, we would have received our full quota and there would not have been cuts to other programmes. It is a matter of simple mathematics.