Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I regret the 21,000 proposed activation places were not included in the budget and they are entirely new. As the Deputy knows - he was very critical of this - they needed to be funded by way of new sources of revenue. So these were not planned. The programme had an additional 5,000 places under Tús, which the Minister has now put into practice. That would be 5,000 in addition to the figure I gave in the reply and they were the only ones provided for.

Obviously the Minister for Social Protection is responsible for developing the national employment and entitlements service and I know she is actively working on that, which will represent a significant break. The OECD has been trenchantly critical of Ireland's approach in the past of not matching payment with activation policies and having a streamlined approach, and the Minister is determined to address that gap.

I am aware - the Deputy, himself, drew my attention to anecdotal evidence - that the VAT cuts are not being passed on. While detailed criteria against which a decision will be reached as to whether to retain this have not been drawn up by Government, we will want to see it is having an impact in terms of the competitiveness of our tourism product, activity rates in these sectors and a reduction in price. I am monitoring it closely and am asking the National Consumer Agency to monitor it, so we will gather evidence.

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