Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

It will free up front-line staff, who deal with thousands of people simply signing on, to look at high risk customers and see if they are working. We will have human resources to track down high risk customers.

I believe strongly in activation, by offering people positions in schemes and then tracking those people who suddenly become unavailable. Every time we engage in the national employment action programme we find that people disappear very fast when they are asked to come for an interview. We need to put more resources into front-line staff to check on what those people are at and why they disappear when they are asked for an interview. It is a matter of putting a whole package together.

It does not make sense to tie up a huge number of officials dealing with the honest, ordinary people in a bureaucratic process. We should focus their efforts where there is a risk. It all comes back to risk analysis.

See this speech in context