Mr. Alan Nuzum:

I will try to cover the questions but I will get some value from my colleagues as well.

Senator Cullinane made some very good points. He raised the issue of embedding a culture of learning and development within organisations. Clearly the companies that we engage with have self-selected and put themselves forward, usually on the recommendation of a peer, to get involved.

The most effective tactic we found to increase the incidence of training and development within an organisation is to start at the top with the owner or manager. The more switched on they are to their own personal development, the more likely it is that there will be a trickle-down effect over time and that they will help to train their staff. For example, there is a slightly unintended consequence of the ManagementWorks programme which focuses exclusively on owners and managers. We have been talking to the cohorts that started six or eight months ago and they say they have never provided much training for their people, but because they have had all this training we need to start spreading the benefit around. That is one clear tactic that has worked and we will continue to push on that.

The second question concerned the whole regional piece. Part of what we do is to focus on the six sectors, which we mentioned in the note provided to the committee. Those sectors, which have been identified by the expert group, have export potential and there is FDI involvement. However, that is by no means the only route through which we support training in general. If one looked at a list of the networks we fund, the clue is often in the name - for example, the Waterford Chamber Skillnet, Galway Executive Skillnet, the North-West Technical Skillnet or the South Kerry Skillnet. All those networks are mixed sectors, so it is not about industry-specific training.

This also refers to the point concerning generic skills. Almost of all of what we do are skills whereby one can mix a group of people from different companies. They will not be very company specific, so one tends to get a good volume of basic customer services, communications, selling and efficiency training.

We have a good presence in the south east but it could probably be improved and we are looking at ways of doing that. For example, I am working with the south-east action group to see what can be done.

The tourism side of things is a real challenge for us. Within those 10,000 companies, particularly the mixed sector ones, there are many individual hospitality businesses, including restaurants, cafés and bars. In days gone by, we had a number of different hospitality sector networks but they were not able to survive the model of having to come up with 50% of the funding. That was a big challenge for them, unfortunately, but that is our model and it works for us.

As part of the new call for proposals, we are actively engaged with a number of groups from the hospitality sector, all of them with a strong regional presence. Very often we can fund a national sectoral network, but within that there might be satellites in particular parts of the country where the need is greatest. It is clearly a massive sector for the economy but one that we probably need to do more on.

As regards measuring success, we employ a raft of evaluation processes from the usual evaluation of training on the day through to measuring the return on investment in training. There are a lot of other evaluations in between. The committee was sent a copy of our latest independent evaluation which relates to 2011. This is an independent evaluation conducted on all our activities but part of the objective was to determine the return on investment for the State. One particular piece of analysis looked at the direct funding that had gone towards supporting jobseekers versus the confirmed number of jobseekers who had gained employment as a direct result of their participation with Skillnets.

There was a conservative approach of stripping out anything that could in any way be affected by other factors. The bottom line was that there was a 258% return on investment for the State when we looked at the cost of programmes and a year's benefit to the State from not having to pay jobseeker's allowance and-or benefit. The figure of 258% is correct and is emblazoned on my mind. The cost was €3.3 million and the benefit was in the region of €9.5 million. I can give the committee the exact figures, which are in the report. Hopefully, however, that will give the committee some idea of the fact that we do not shy away from a hard evaluation of training.

Having operated in the training area for many years, and without criticising my training colleagues, I know there is sometimes a tendency to put the whole impact measurement and evaluation of training in the "too difficult" pile because so many other factors can get in the way when one is trying to measure something like that. In the external independent evaluations that have been conducted on our activities, however, we push it to the absolute limit in trying to determine what the return is for the State.

Behind that is a whole series of evaluation programmes that enable companies to determine the benefit to them. If there is one sure way of encouraging a company to continue to invest in training, it is if it can see that there is a clear return, particularly a clear bottom-line return, in terms of increased sales, reduced costs, greater profit and greater efficiency. If we did not engage in that type of activity with and through our networks, enterprises would not engage with us because that is how they measure their business.