Mr. Paul Carroll:

Last week, we held an event in Coolock where 600 people were invited to see 23 education and training providers that provide a multitude of courses from basic reading and writing right the way through to PhDs in DCU. We held an event the previous month in Finglas and another in Swords the month prior to that. We are monitoring the situation on an ongoing basis, not waiting for a big bang. It is a fundamental part of our work.

To answer the questions on Gateway, it is of major importance and has a significant contribution to make to the provision of a wealth of real employment opportunities for young people. We have recently agreed a pilot in Fingal that addresses many of the perceived issues in respect of the people being referred. Until fairly recently, the requirement was for random selections and the Department did not have a say in who could be sent. Neither could we send people for whom we felt it would be a great opportunity or just to get them off our books. It was a simple random selection process. We will trial a new approach. Generally, the Department has agreed that, henceforth, 20% of places can be filled by way of self-referral, which is a positive move. We are determining how to implement this idea logistically. In Fingal, we will write out and interview people to determine their suitability. There is a feedback loop. Where we invite people to attend and find them suitable, the local authority will consider the range of opportunities that might be suitable for those candidates. If it believes that the person presenting is not job ready, it will feed that information back to us to explain why. Clearly, we must be able to deal with whatever impeded that person from being able to progress. The feedback loop is built in. In terms of the-----