Mr. John McKeon:

JobPath providers do things slightly differently from how we do them. At its core, however, it is essentially the same process and JobPath is an extra resource capacity for the Department. It should be borne in mind that when the scheme was introduced, there were 455,000 people on the live register. Between the Department and local employment services, we had some 600 case workers working to assist people. In many areas, the ratio of unemployed jobseekers to case workers was 2,000:1, compared with an international norm of 200:1 or fewer. JobPath was a way of brining in additional resource capacity and, as a result, we are now at a ratio of approximately 200:1 across our Intreo service, the contracted local employment services and JobPath. The fundamental role of all those services is to provide a personal advisory service to jobseekers.