Mr. John McKeon:

I will mention a couple of things. With regard to the timelines, there has been extensive consultation. I will not go back into that because I am conscious of time but this has been in the offing for quite a few years now.

The Deputy is right. The existing providers of local employment services will have a choice as to whether to tender. I hope they all will and that they will collaborate in doing so. They are the sitting tenants and are well positioned. There may be competition from other providers and it will be an open and fair competition but the existing providers are well positioned. With regard to the evidence for this, as I have said, the approach we took was to start tendering in four areas where there was not currently a local employment service. In two out of the three areas for which they tendered, the partnerships, the local development companies, were successful, so I believe they can succeed.

We will be giving an extended tender period to enable all providers to put together a good tender response and to enable them to figure out collaboration locally.

The numbers who will be referred to the service are ultimately determined by the number of people who are unemployed. There is no set number. I am not sure where the number of 438 came from. It may be from one of the consultant's reports. I do not have the papers in front of me.