I propose to take Questions Nos. 45 and 46 together.
As I indicated to the House on 7 December, the National Centre for Partnership, established under Partnership 2000, has undertaken a significant amount of work in the past year.
In December 1998, a training programme for the development of partnership in the public sector workplace was launched. The programme is called Working Together.
The programme is designed to help managers, trade union representatives and employees to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to develop a partnership approach at the level of the workplace.
The training programme is of use to trainers-facilitators who are working with partnership groups, especially with groups that are getting started. The programme is available without charge from the NCP through attendance at half-day briefings on the materials and their usage. To date approximately 100 organisations have attended these briefings.
For the private sector, a 13 module joint partnership training programme together with a supporting 25 minute video was launched by me in Dublin Castle on the 14 July last. This programme was developed jointly by the NCP, IBEC and ICTU as a very substantial contribution to enterprise level partnership.
A business plan, which has been approved by the board of the centre, for the joint delivery of this programme is being implemented at present. The business plan sets out clear parameters for joint delivery of this programme, together with a monitoring system to measure progress.