Ms Anne Vaughan:

Indeed. To be fair to the authorities, they had to work through this as well. There was a lot to work through. I do not want to give the impression that all the problems were on the authorities' side. We had to get going on our side as well. We are trying to place long-term unemployed people in the local authorities via the Gateway programme. To be fair to the local authorities, it is possible they are in recruitment mode, more than placement mode, when they are looking for people. We need to get our message across. It is possible we have too many schemes. They kind of look like each other. Tús, which was originally a slow burner, is now very good.

We can learn from that. There are no difficulties in placing people in Tús. I suspect that in three to six months time, Gateway will be in steady state mode.