Mr. John McKeon:

Mr. Corcoran is more eloquent on this than I am because he has been looking at this for many years but the evaluation of effectiveness is hugely complicated. It is necessary to isolate the impact of one initiative from all other initiatives and everything else that might have been going on in an individual's life that might have impacted on the progression to employment or otherwise. Having said that, one of the actions in the Pathways to Work 2015 strategy is the set-up of a robust evaluation mechanism to try to do that, to identify which schemes work and to what extent. Often, it is easy to say which schemes do not work. However, it can be very difficult to say which ones are really working. We have done evaluations on JobBridge and that shows, for example, a 61% progression to employment rate which, standing alone, looks very good. The rate for the MOMENTUM programme is about 40% and, standing alone, that looks very good.
To be precise about it, it is necessary to set up control groups and compare in a scientific way how it compares with other people in the same location with similar skills-sets and so forth. We are working on this in the Labour Market Council. This includes the participation of Professor John Martin, who was a professor in economics in Oxford and then became head of the OECD employment services. Mr. Corcoran is involved. Philip O'Connell, a professor from UCD, is involved as is Alan Gray from Indecon and Marie Sherlock from SIPTU. These are eminent economists actively looking at how we can do this. We would hope to have some of that insightful information next year. Prima facie, JobsPlus is working with 61% of people on JobsPlus being more than two years unemployed. That is a remarkable outcome. Progression to employment rates of people who are more than two years unemployed are well below 10%. They are typically in the order of 4% to 5%. JobBridge, with a 61% progression to employment rate, is doing very well by international standards. We do need more robust evaluations. I think Ms Vaughan will speak further on the Gateway scheme.