Mr. John McKeon:

Many countries have contracting models. The two most advanced are Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also useful models in the United States, Germany and Sweden. We looked at all of them and took what we thought were the best elements of each. The employment claims in the United Kingdom are based on representations by the provider who says, for example, "I got John McKeon a job". We do not accept that alone. We check all employment outcomes against commencement of employment notices that we receive from the Revenue Commissioners and against our own records in terms of somebody signing off the live register. That is an automatic check. We check to make sure that the person is in employment and is not claiming a welfare payment. That was a failure in the United Kingdom. We have also built in controls with regard to pricing. Our pricing is linked to the overall level of employment in the economy, which makes it more complicated. As the overall level of employment in the economy grows, our prices fall so that the companies cannot cream or skim. We also have audits in place and we do field audits of all the offices. That was not done in the United Kingdom.