Dr. Rosalyn Tamming:

Yes, the OECD did a piece of work for us two years ago. It looked at Ireland and did comparisons with other countries. It believed that our public employment service, the Intreo offices and so forth were not as proactive as they could be. In other countries they are more proactive in reaching out to people with disabilities and supporting them into employment. In fact one of the Scandinavian countries does not allow anyone to go onto disability allowance until over the age of 40, so that efforts have to be made up to that age. I will pass over to my colleague, Ms Wilkinson, who will have more information on what some of the other EU countries are doing.