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

The report was issued in December. It is not the completed report but the interim report finds that it incentivised people to educate and train themselves further, although the Deputy does not subscribe to that. However, I will send a note to see if we can get the final report because we all want the same thing, which is fewer young people unemployed and more people working and training.

Regarding illness benefits, I will probably goose this as soon as I say it but thankfully everything has settled down, notwithstanding that there are people every week who do not get a payment. That is no different today from what would have occurred under the old system. There are reasons for people not getting the payments, such as a box is ticked incorrectly, a general practitioner filled in a wrong box or somebody in the Department might tick the wrong box on a screen, but they are few and far between. We still get in excess of 50,000 applications every week and there are 50,000 payments every week. There is no problem with our call waiting numbers. Thankfully, calm and peace have been restored to the office. Our staff went through a very stressful time through no fault of their own, and I am grateful for their forbearance. Things are back to normal and we are going into a period when fewer people tend to be ill than would be the case in the period from which we have just emerged, so peace reigns at present.