Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief as other members of the committee have more knowledge of the granular details of the matter. I will defer to their greater experience in that regard. I say to the Minister that I am worried. This committee has received an article of correspondence from Maynooth University entitled, Winners and Losers?: the social marketisation of civil society. It is an extremely good document that addresses many of my concerns.

I accept the rationale presented by the Minister that this had to be introduced in this manner because of competition law but I am very worried that we are moving away from a model that is person-focused to one where a person is reduced to a unit and we may be looking at attempts to increase throughputs of units through the service. It is a real worry that there will be a change of focus. Will we begin to look at a jobs service focused on getting people into any job rather than getting them into the right job? Perhaps we will not even be worried about the job at the end but the other aspects of the process.

It may be somewhat tangential but I noticed Denmark managed to get around procurement problems because it has an well-empowered local government system. It is widely acknowledged we are much too centralised in our Government model. Would it not be fantastic for the likes of Waterford's council to be much more hands-on in procuring this kind of service? I will defer to other members now.