Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 9 December 2021
Public Accounts Committee
2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Management of Social Welfare Appeals
Chapter 11 - Controls Over the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment
9:30 am
Mr. John McKeon:
The structure that is currently in place is not quite a county one. Leaving that aside, the decision to go for regional structures was that when we got the advice about going to tender, we had to look at what we were going to tender for. We engaged a number of consultancy firms to have a look at this. They came up with the proposal. I mentioned to one of the Deputy’s colleagues, which the Deputy may have missed out on earlier on, that in respect of the local employment schemes, LES, and the job clubs, between them we have currently 66 different locations around the country. As the Deputy can see it is not entirely-----