Mr. John McKeon:

The number associated with youth entrepreneurship training and mentoring supports is 700, while the figure associated with microfinance is 150. The three must be taken together. The sums of 700 and 150 represent an additional effort.

As Mr. Carroll is much more familiar with Gateway than I am, I will ask him to deal with it. I am almost certain the programme does have a supervisory element, although I will ask Mr. Carroll to clarify this. I know that there was some talk to the effect that there was no supervisory element, but there may have been a misunderstanding. I absolutely agree that the programme could provide a very good pathway to employment. The objective is to deal with long-term unemployment. Generally, the proportion who are long-term unemployed is higher among older than younger groups, thus affecting the figures.

Sometimes there is talk about people who are unemployable - I say it myself from time to time. There are some on the live register who will find it very difficult in every circumstance to find a job. However, even at the height of the Celtic tiger, there were approximately 150,000 people on the live register, of whom approximately 100,000 were short-term unemployed. There was frictional unemployment. One is looking at a hard cohort of 50,000. There are approximately 400,000 on the live register, whcih means that there are more than enough on it who are capable of doing a job. Most people on it are employable and the vast majority want to work. It is a question of the Department giving them the right support and direction. Mr. Carroll will refer to Gateway also.

With regard to communication with young people, being in my 50s, I am loath to say we are on point, but we do make an effort. We use Twitter, Facebook and other social media, including YouTube and such resources. In my experience, however, the most effective communication mechanism which will not be affected by any development in IT or otherwise is face to face communication. We invest most of our resources in face to face work using our case officers. The Intreo approach is about getting to speak to individuals. Perhaps Mr. Carroll might elaborate on this.