Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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I concur with the comments of Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. I was also sent the document from Maynooth. Has the Minister read it? If she had, she would be much more concerned about moving forward with the policy that is currently proposed. As others wish to contribute and time is very short, I will ask some questions.

Has there been any consultation with the local employment service, LES, providers prior to the roll-out of the proposed regional employment service model? Has the Department carried out an analysis of the impact that the proposed model will have on existing local employment services? If such analysis has been carried out, is the Minister willing to share that with the committee? Models of commissioning have been outlined to us by a number of community projects and local employment services.

They outlined that the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, and Tusla have built-in performance targets and penalties for underperformance. They protect the taxpayer's investment. That is particularly true of SICAP, which was developed by the Minister's own Department and is based on contracts that guarantee performance but respect the financial structure of community-based charities. Why has this model, which serves the funder and service users so well, been ignored in this request for tender, RFT?

Can the Minister confirm that the proposed regional employment service, RES, will be a referral-only service and not a walk-in service similar to the LES? What is the rationale for that proposal? A lot of people will be left out of this service, like lone parents, carers, people with disabilities and others who will not be able to access it because they prefer walk-in services. Other people wish to ask questions so I will leave it at that. There is massive concern in the community about this and there is a huge fear that we are moving a lot of our services to a for-profit model. That fear is now being realised. This is absolutely unacceptable.