Dr. John Sweeney:

I share many of those questions rather than being able to give clear answers to them. I value every point committee members have raised and I will endeavour to advance them a little more.

I have not seen the report Deputy O’Dea referred to on direct employment programmes, but its findings do not surprise me. If we think of community employment, Tús and Gateway together, the capacity of direct employment programmes has remained steady throughout the fall in unemployment, which we gratefully have witnessed. Voices are being raised as the client group, the proportion of the long-term unemployed on the live register, gets smaller, but the capacity of these programmes has been rising. Some of these programmes are among the most expensive of all individual labour market measures. I am not surprised wise heads are pointing this out as unusual.

There was a quip from the current Minister that economists do not like community employment because it does not work while politicians like it because it does. The metrics and the outcomes on which one chooses to evaluate a programme like community employment are critical.