Michael Conaghan (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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I welcome the delegation. I would like to remark on the work it does and the value of that work. Moving someone closer to work is probably one of the most important interventions that can be made in someone's life. It takes staff to do such work, as I would like to acknowledge. My second remark is about the scale of the transformation of services. When we think about how State services work, we often have this caricature of a very slow moving process in which it takes years to do things. It strikes me on the service the Department has reconfigured and transformed that it happened very quickly and without a great deal of fuss, without the things that can happen when people are asked to change roles, positions and so on. It is worth pointing out that something like that can be done, especially in the context of the collapse of the economy and the tsunami which left people left high and dry without work. All of this has not been noted properly.

Where is the Department in a European context? Has it moved closer or further away from what is considered to be the most humane model of social protection in Europe, the so-called Scandinavian model? Have we moved closer to the English model of activation or intervention? What is Ms Vaughan's ideal in this regard?