Mr. John McKeon:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before it today, both for the opportunity to discuss activation in this session and subsequently to discuss developments relating to payments and services for lone parents. I am joined by my colleagues Niall Egan, a principal officer in the Department with responsibility for jobseeker and lone parent income policy, and by Erica Klein, assistant principal officer with responsibility for one-parent family payments. In this first session, I propose to provide a short update on activation developments. As committee members will be aware, I made presentations on this topic on a number of occasions, most recently on 28 January. Unfortunately, time constraints on that occasion limited the time for discussion, so rather than take up much of the committee's time today by repeating what I said then, my presentation today is a shortened version of that provided on 28 January. I understand the committee clerk has circulated copies of that presentation and I and my colleagues will be pleased to address any questions on today's statement or that of 28 January.

As members of the committee will be aware, the Pathways to Work strategy set out a comprehensive reform of the State’s approach to helping unemployed jobseekers return to work. It was initiated in 2012 as a strategy for the period 2012 to 2015 and is designed to complement the Action Plan for Jobs as part of a twin-pronged approach to tackling the jobs crisis that emerged in the final years of the last decade. The Action Plan for Jobs is focused on stimulating employment growth. Pathways to Work is focused on making sure that as many as possible of these new jobs, and other vacancies that arise in the economy, are filled by people who are unemployed jobseekers.

I do not intend to outline the wide range of reforms implemented as part of Pathways to Work as these have been outlined to the committee previously, but they include, for example, the merger of the community welfare service, the FÁS employment service and the Department of Social Protection in order to provide a one-stop shop experience for job seekers; the development and implementation of a case management approach based on client profiling; one to one engagement between clients and case officers; personal progression planning; the streamlining of decision-making to reduced decision times from weeks to days; the development and launch of new services and schemes such as JobsPlus and JobBridge; and the introduction of a social contract of rights and responsibilities, including penalty arrangements for those not engaging with activation services. Reform also involves, certainly over the past year, a significantly increased level of engagement with employers.

As stated in previous presentations, while it is very difficult to ascribe a cause and effect relationship between the reforms implemented and the reduction in unemployment, there are definite signs that Pathways to Work has had an impact. In particular, it is notable that the jobless growth phenomenon that was typical of economic recoveries following other recessions is not being repeated. In fact, jobs growth in Ireland led rather than lagged economic growth. Other signs that the approach has had an impact are that some of the key targets set out have been achieved ahead of time. For example, over 60,000 long-term unemployed people have moved into work since the Pathways to Work strategy was launched, the persistence rate from short-term to long-term unemployment has also fallen from 33% to 29% and the progression rate to employment for people more than two years unemployed has already reached its end of 2015 target of 40%. I have provided an up-to-date statement of performance against the individual metrics as an appendix to my statement.

Looking ahead, while the initial focus of the Department of Social Protection’s reform programme focused on improving services, via Intreo, to those newly unemployed people identified at high risk of becoming long-term unemployed, its focus in the Pathways to Work 2015 is to augment this approach by increasing the intensity of engagement with people who are long term unemployed and the level of engagement with employers. Persuading employers to offer employment opportunities to people who are long-term unemployed, predominantly males over 35 years of age, is a particularly difficult challenge.

In 2015, this will involve implementing a structured process of engagement of people who are long-term unemployed, which will see approximately 8,500 people being referred to the Intreo activation process each month; rolling out JobPath, a payment by results contract model with third party providers of employment services specifically targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers; establishing a professional account management and sales capability within Intreo, targeted at employers; introducing new schemes, including FirstSteps and JobsPlus Youth, to give effect to commitments made in the Government’s youth guarantee implementation plan; developing new IT capability, including an upgraded jobs website, to respond more effectively to employer and jobseeker needs; expanding the number of places on JobsPlus, the jobs subsidy specifically designed to support long-term unemployed jobseekers; introducing the back to work family dividend to address work incentive and welfare trap issues; and providing access to employment services and supports to lone parents transitioning from the one-parent family payment.

In addition, it is planned to improve the evaluation of process and programme effectiveness and inform future developments by commissioning quantitative and qualitative assessments of the impact of Pathways to Work, changes in job seekers' progression to employment and also job seekers' satisfaction with the services. These evaluations will be conducted with the input and advice of the Labour Market Council, which is a forum of labour market experts and stakeholders established by the Tánaiste in late 2013.

I hope this summary of past and future developments has provided the members of the committee with some insight into the Department's activation programmes. My colleagues and I will be happy to take any questions that committee members might have.