Dr. John Sweeney:

I fully understand that. On the other hand, if we go with the thesis that as the numbers who might need these programmes are falling, the quality of the programmes should improve, we need to ask if we could be more ambitious for those who have been the core clientele for community employment. Taking the sponsors of these schemes, can we not get them to increase their commitment to ensure the period on these direct employment programmes is genuinely a stepping stone?

I referred to a concept known as closed circuits, which comes from French labour market research, namely, that if we restrict people’s experience of the world of work to employment generated in their locality, we are selling them short. It would be a good ambition to ensure the quality of direct employment programmes features more training and more exposure to the world of work to ensure people are launched into the wider labour market. Given that the age group that avails of this programme would include people in their 40s and 50s, it is a good place to start.

This is not me clawing back the money and being thankful we got an evaluation which states it must be scaled down. That money should be reinvested in the quality of the measures.