Mr. Tony Murphy:

We carry out audits based on a sample of member states at a particular point in time. In 2017 Ireland was one of the member states in the sample. The reason was that it had been recommended by the Commission to be an example of best practice. Even though the youth unemployment rate was still relatively high - any youth unemployment rate is a sad figure to report - relative to other member states, it was not so bad. What the Commission thought was very good here was the way the population had been identified. In many member states the administration does not know where the unemployed youth are. There is a significant problem in identifying the NEETs, young people not in education, employment or training. One of the findings in our audit was that a lot of the outcomes involved training and retraining, not employment. Compared to other member states, fewer permanent jobs or apprenticeships were being created.