Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The area about which I am most critical and which needs most improvement, as the Department has acknowledged in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, is the evaluation of outcomes. The Department has also acknowledged it to an extent today. People who have availed of an intervention are asked to complete a survey. In the case of SR Technics, the rate of non-response to the survey of outcomes was 67%. Even in the case of Dell, it was 42%. While people have suffered what Mr. Ó Foghrú correctly calls "the trauma of redundancy", they have also availed of public money and received a benefit from it in terms of returning to employment or starting a business. However, there is an unwillingness to respond to the survey. Perhaps it is a matter of human nature that people get surveys and do not fill them out. Can we strengthen the structures in place to ensure that we get the information back? It is not a question of filling out the survey for the sake of it. It is about the fact that we do not know how 67% of people in SR Technics who received an intervention felt how it went. It makes it difficult to form an opinion on the success of the outcome.