Ms Meadhbh Costello:

The programme managers are employed by the individual consortia. For example, IBEC manages a number of consortia and we employ programme managers to operate them. They frequently collect the same data and it is not often shared. Sometimes this data has been collected through letters and paper, which is really not how businesses operate in the 21st century, so we can imagine the difficulties an employer would have chasing down and submitting duplicate details over and over again.

Going back to the Deputy's point about quality assurance, if we could free up some of the time of the authorised officers where they are doing this paperwork so they could do more in the workplace with employers and apprentices doing that quality assurance and offering that pastoral service for apprentices, it would be very valued.