Mr. Denis Leamy:

On Deputy Seán Canney's point about the one-stop-shop, the need for people to be signposted to where they need to go and people being confused by the multiple agencies in this space, we have received feedback in the last couple of years, in particular through our feedback and engagement mechanisms. We meet groups regularly to seek feedback from them on our services and how we might do things better. We held a number of regional seminars and workshops in the past year, at which we engaged with all of the people with whom we worked. The issue raised by the Deputy is one that continually comes up in our engagements. To address it, we have dedicated central help desks in Pobal and client service desks where people can make a telephone call or deal with any issue that they need to have resolved. In the past year we received over 5,000 telephone calls and 75% of the issues raised were resolved within one day, while 95% were resolved within three days.

We are endeavouring to improve our communications. We have developed a new website which is more user-friendly in assisting people to access information on local services. We are also working closely with local community development committees and local development companies to support them more. I accept the point that this is an area in which we continuously need to improve.

We are not there yet and people do get confused by the range of entities. There is a requirement for all of us to work more collaboratively on that. We are increasingly using online systems and are trying to make things as efficient as possible for groups accessing them. We are conscious of people in rural areas where there is not effective broadband. In those instances we have services whereby people can talk to us on the phone and forms can be filled out over the phone. People are encouraged to access the county childcare committees, which have facilities to use this or their local libraries, or to link in with the local community development committees. We are considering a variety of ways that people can access the services. On the other side, we are trying to make our systems as efficient as possible to do the work and online is the way we will proceed. We are very mindful of that.

On the Atlantic economic corridor, it is fair to say that in all the programmes we have managed on behalf of Government, a significant percentage are allocated to the west coast because it is a question of focusing on the areas that need it most based on the data we have. We are endeavouring to do that. The local economic community development plans in each county are prioritising different areas.

On childcare compliance, a good percentage of the visits are unannounced. That arose when a few years ago significant issues about the quality of childcare intervention were raised in the public domain. The response from the Government and the Department was that there should be a percentage of unannounced visits. I know it creates stress for childcare providers, especially if Pobal comes in to do a compliance visit and Tusla inspects them. We are working with Tusla and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to try to integrate them more and to achieve clearer communication with the childcare facilities. We have fed back people's concerns on that to the Department but it is a policy issue.

It was not initially envisaged that Pobal would carry out the Article 48 checks. It was always envisaged that local authorities would take them on for LEADER. The Department asked us to take it on because it was felt that the local community development committees were not well established and needed more time before taking it on and having local autonomy. We and the Department have been anxious to ensure that there is a transfer of that service to the local areas. There is and will be significant training provided to each of the local authority areas over the next few months on the Article 48 checks to ensure consistency. We are still involved with them for oversight or in the areas where a local authority is not carrying it out. I have asked my colleagues to search for the costs of the Article 48 checks. We will give the committee the absolute detail on that by next week.

The point that there are many regulatory requirements is well made and we are always considering that from the board and executive perspectives. Volunteers involved in these services are overburdened in taking responsibility for those. Our chairperson designate gave an example of how we have tried, through the senior alert scheme for example, to take the administration off local groups in order that they can focus on visits to people in their homes as opposed to filling out forms. That is the direction we are going, to take as much as we can for most of the programmes. If a community or voluntary organisation has charitable status it must meet all the regulatory requirements and there probably is more work we can do to support them. We will be launching toolkits fairly soon to help groups with that. We will be running regional workshops with groups to support them and we are looking to expand our helpdesk to respond to people on that.