Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

A large amount of work was done by staff of the Department in the course of last year in dealing on a very close basis with community employment schemes to assess what the exact levels of expenditure were, where there were difficulties and to solve these difficulties. In the original Budget Statement there were reductions to be achieved under the heading of the training and materials grant. Subsequent to that announcement, the Minister found money elsewhere within the Vote to subvent it; therefore, when we carried out the assessment, the level of cutback originally flagged did not have to be enforced during 2012. A very extensive review was undertaken of all community employment schemes and their financial basis. It identified various areas where there were savings to be achieved, for example, in insurance, where there were different arrangements for different schemes. There were other savings to be achieved where potentially we could amalgamate schemes to achieve better efficiencies, or where we could increase the ratio of participants to supervisors within the agreements in place to get greater benefit from the expenditure being made. In terms of delivering better value for the moneys available for training, arrangements were put in place to secure more cost effective training solutions for many of those involved in the schemes.