Mr. John McKeon:

I know we have had the conversation about JobPath before and we will probably never agree on this. My job is to be objective and to look at the data. I would have to say that our customer research, which is independent, gives very good results for JobPath. An interesting report was done by Michael McGann of Maynooth University of a street level bureaucrat view. I think it was funded by the OECD or the European Commission. What he found was that there are definite differences in terms of attitude and values between JobPath and local employment services, but they are not very significant. In fact, some of them might be in the reverse direction from what one might expect. While I do not want to put words in his mouth, I think the overall conclusion, if I remember, was that it has not resulted in the type of experience that people thought it might, based on, for example, the experience in the UK. I say to the Deputy that she should have a look at the data and have a look at the results. I think it has been a reasonably good service. We are changing it. There will be a national employment service as well as the regional, which we will tender out. Obviously, the JobPath providers might or might not tender for that and they might or might not succeed if they do, but that is fine.