Mr. John McKeon:

I will start with the comments of Deputy Catherine Murphy. I absolutely take on board the points she makes. I would not for one second suggest that the representations that she or any other Deputy has made are for any reason other than that they are receiving those representations. I often get representations as well. As I stated in my opening remarks, we must be cognisant that very often public representatives and the Department tend to get complaints rather than positive comments. The Department deals with 18 million payments per year. If a fraction of a percentage of those payments give rise to complaints, that creates an impression that there are significant problems but actually there are not.

We are very conscious of the need to validate and verify the survey information.

For example, the survey of JobPath participants is carried out independently of the Department. It is not branded by the Department. This year, it was carried out by the respected research agency, Behaviour & Attitudes, while in previous years it was carried out by W5. These were reviewed positively by our chief statistician with regard to the statistical approach and the margin of error. With regard to concerns about whether people give accurate feedback, in matters such as this one looks at trends over time. These show a consistently high level of satisfaction with the JobPath service. If, however, 285,000 have gone through the process and 10% were not happy, that is 28,500 people. The Deputy and I will hear a lot of complaints as a consequence of that. It is important, however, not to view these representations as an indicator of an overall problem. I take on board everything the Deputy has said and we will certainly consider it. As I said previously, we are looking at redesigning the contract to address the types of issue that are coming up.

The report we circulated with regard to the econometric evaluation is very robust and has been very well received. I gather that the OECD is to publish its own paper based on it because it considers it to be of such a high quality. It shows very positive outcomes for JobPath participants and, again, very high levels of customer satisfaction. Those data must be taken into account. I cannot say that it is 100% accurate but neither are the representations we receive. We have to try to find a balance. I take on board everything the Deputy has said.

With regard to Deputy Carthy's questions on one-parent families, I am very much aware of recent coverage with regard to the one-parent family payment. In fact, one of the Deputy's colleagues was among the first people to draw my attention to the matter. The trade union Fórsa drew my attention to the latter case because it was very annoyed at some of the coverage in the press, which has been quite inaccurate. I do not want to get into it but the kind of behaviours instanced in those newspaper articles and in one or two Twitter storms are not behaviours the Department would condone. If they are happening, it is in a tiny proportion of cases.

We have 370 inspectors in the Department, most of whom are women and most of whom are over 50 years of age. They are all highly experienced and trained to deal with people in a sensitive and empathetic manner. Representatives often ask them to go out to people. Many of their visits are triggered by representatives asking them to help Mary or John. That is why the trade union was particularly annoyed at some of this coverage. As I have said, we contacted some of the news outlets involved and asked whether they could get permission from the people on whom they reported to give my office the details of these cases so that they could be investigated fully. I have not received any such details yet. If any Deputy here knows of examples, and if the people involved are scared to come forward because they are afraid there would be some repercussions, they should know there would never be. If Deputies can get permission to bring these cases to my attention, we will look into them.