Dr. Colm O'Reardon:

There are a couple of issues. First, there has been a rapid pace of additional spending so we have to worry when spending is ramping up quickly. We need to do a piece of work, which we hope to do with the ESRI, on a kind of overarching piece of how we properly assess NTF-type expenditure, including what is the right way to evaluate expenditure on training and whether it is different from any other type of expenditure, such as expenditure on people who are seeking employment versus people who are in employment. We need to do a piece of metalogical work on that. We have provided deadlines for meeting the recommendations in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. We talked a little about performance metrics that are put into annual performance agreements with our agencies. There are metrics in the SOLAS performance framework that represent national policy. on the one hand. but also represent our reflection of the performance frameworks that SOLAS has with ETBs on the other. That is reflected in the performance agreement we have with SOLAS but we are happy to look at those again and see if they are adequate.