Mr. John McKeon:

Absolutely. We can all get very narrow-minded in specifying what gets people a job. Was it a stint on JobPath or in community employment or a training course with the local education and training board? It is important to remember it is probably the sum total that ultimately helps somebody who is very long-term unemployed get into employment.

For a while and until last year, mainly because we were trying to ration available places to everybody, people on community employment and Tús could not also be on JobPath and vice versa. Perhaps the Deputy is alluding to that. We have changed it and in the past couple of months, for example, approximately 1,200 are on community employment or Tús and JobPath at the same time. We have relaxed the stipulation because community employment is a requirement of 19 hours per week and JobPath does not take up the other 19 hours per week. It is a couple of hours per week. To an extent people thought they were in competition but they never were. It has been raised by people as such but I can honestly and absolutely say they were never in competition with one another. To the extent that people thought they were, it is certainly not an issue any more.