Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 9 November 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection

Community Employment Programme

10:40 am

Photo of John BradyJohn Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes, for JobPath and with respect to where people are to go. I take on board what was said about the process of the year lead-up to that. Many people have called to my constituency offices, and the same applies to other Deputies, who have told me they want to participate on community employment schemes. They have identified that themselves, whether it be to get a QQI qualification or to work within their community, to have those supports around them or to have direct involvement in the workplace. JobPath does not provide that for people. It does not give people the opportunity to do that. People know their own deficits and what they would like to do. However, the difficulty is, and this has been said to me by personal advisers within JobPath, that the referral of people to JobPath is not necessarily a random selection process. How exactly does that process work? I am told it is nearly a form of punishment. People are being referred to JobPath and told that no other options are being made available to them. I would like one of the witnesses to answer in that respect. People are then locked into that process for 12 months, knowing that they will not get the education or training they have identified that they need. We have seen that with 30,000 people coming through that process and many of them wanting to participate on community employment schemes. That is the crux of the problem. People are being forced to go on JobPath. I would question that it is voluntary, and that is one of the difficulties. Once people are referred to it, the big push is to get them to sign the contract on the dotted line. There is pressure not to let the person out until he or she signs the contract, and then they are locked into that for 12 months with no opportunities available to them. As one of the Deputies said, they are on JobPath for 12 months and they do not have the opportunity after one or two months to move to a community employment scheme or some other scheme that would be more beneficial to them.

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