Ms Anne Vaughan:

I will respond to some of the Chairman's questions and Mr. John McKeon will take the remainder.

On the question of Intreo being sluggish, I accept that criticism. Nobody is as frustrated about that as the Minister and the Department. It is sometimes hard to know why things take so long but, to be fair, in some instances planning permission, fire certificates and refurbishment are required, all of which take time. I do not think there is anything this committee can do to speed up the process. The OPW has said it will have the 43 centres by the end of the year. As I said earlier, that is very ambitious, but it is what we are working towards. There is work for both the OPW and ourselves to do in this regard. In my opening statement and the accompanying information pack we outline what will be required to get us to the full Intreo service, but all offices have been touched by significant elements of the Intreo service already. It is not a black-or-white scenario. We will have to determine where we are at the end of the year. We are very conscious that many of the Intreo offices are scheduled to come on stream in the last month of 2013, which is challenging in itself. We will assess the situation again at the end of the year. There is no lack of will on our part or that of the OPW but I take the point the Chairman made. This is something the Minister raises with us regularly. She asks about buildings, why there are delays and so forth. She is looking for an increased pace in this area.

The Chairman raised a number of points regarding customer service. One of the things our staff pride themselves on is good engagement. However, I accept that there can be pockets or instances of poor customer service, to which the Chairman has drawn our attention. We will examine the points raised, but with 7,000 staff, it is not always going to be perfect. All working conditions are not ideal either, it must be said.

It is many years since I was before Deputy English when he was Chairman of another committee and we discussed the issue of people being concerned that they would be in a long queue to receive their social welfare payments again if they took up temporary work. We tell people that this is no longer the case, but they must tell us in advance. We suspend claims now when people take up short-term jobs. This is especially relevant in the lead-up to Christmas. It is important that people tell us they are taking up such posts, but I accept the point made by the Chairman. He is not the only public representative who has told us that this is causing difficulties. We have tried to do a lot in that space, but we will do more if necessary.

We have a very intensive training course for case workers. We have just finished a pilot of the course, which went quite well, and Mr. McKeon will elaborate further on that. However, I must repeat what I said to Deputy Lyons earlier, namely, that we do not see ourselves getting involved in career guidance as such. We see our role as a directive one. Perhaps we are speaking the same language on this.