Ms Cróna Gallagher:

I am not sure if I got all of the questions but a number of them overlap to some extent. With regard to how to bring in people, in our experience, people need to want to come in. Very often, people come in when they are at a turning point in their lives or when there is some crisis that precipitates that engagement. It could be something personal, for example, the break-up of a relationship, a divorce or something like that, where the other partner has been doing all of the paperwork. People often come in when their children start school and they realise their six-year old is galloping past them in terms of literacy. It could be something like progression at work, where they realise they would like to apply for promotion and they cannot do that. It has to reach a particular point before people want to come in.

We get referrals in all sorts of ways and we do all sorts of things ourselves in terms of social media, open days and liaising with community groups, which is very important. Community groups tend to know the people who may have difficulties with literacy. ETBs are very good at having a reach into communities, which is a very important part of what we do. It is about trying lots of different ways. There is no one easy way.

The other thing is that just because they come in once, it does not mean they are going to stay. They might come in to get some information but that might be the end of it, so we need to follow that up and have lots of engagement with them. That is time consuming and costly. There is no quick win, and that is what we have learned over the years. It is time consuming and costly to engage people who have low levels of literacy.

To give an example, ETBs have memorandums of understanding with the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Reference was made to JobPath. Our experience is that JobPath refers people into the literacy programmes and we would spend a lot of time working with community stakeholders, statutory stakeholders, partnership companies and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. There are myriad ways in which people engage with us.