Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Brady and I have different views on that so I will not rehash that argument with him today.

There is something odd in relation to the next query raised by the Deputy. The same circular on training, policies and management protocols exists in every single office that we have around the country. I was in the Clondalkin office some weeks ago. A young woman works there who has been in my Department for some time but originally came from the old HSE community welfare system. She was telling me how much more flexibility she had in the old days. As she put it, there is a policy framework now that officers must stick within, which is actually music to my ears, but what the Deputy is telling me is that some people have more discretion than others, and they should not have. There is a policy and a specific set of guidelines. The money is there if it is needed. Somebody in Clondalkin should not have a different view from somebody in Ratoath or Finglas. There should be a similarity of operation. All I can do is to keep doing the continuous training programmes that we do and remind people of what the policy is through circulars.

Again, if the Deputy knows of an example of somebody he thinks should be getting something but is not, he can let me know and I can snoop behind the scenes to check.

Regarding the jobs report, we have been waiting an awfully long time for it. We committed to doing the review of the report on the impact of the reduced rates but we can only do that when we get the report from Maynooth, and we have not received it yet.