Dr. Katriona O'Sullivan:

First, I will address the issue of compulsion. It is funny when I think about my own personal experience, but many people I know, when they get the dreaded letter from the job centre, think, "Oh no, they are on to me", and it is immediately a case of, "I am going to lose my benefits". I know that seems a negative mindset to have, but if people have not lived that life, it is very hard to place themselves in the mindset of a person who is dependent on welfare and State benefits. People do not wake up and think, "I can't wait to get the dole when I am 18 and be unemployed for a long time and have to search around for money". There are consistent experiences that lead people there, so compulsion does not work. Compulsion does not equal engagement and they are not the same thing. My personal experience, having worked in this area and read a lot about it, is that people do not respond well to being told they have to do something, and there are other ways in which people can be encouraged to move out of unemployment.

With regard to the suggestions I have around compulsion, I know we have to do something because there is this fear that if we do not make it compulsory, this will go crazy and everyone will be unemployed. There is a suggestion that there is no motivation in certain individuals to want to move. That is not correct. It is just that they do not recognise how they can move and the benefit of it. Some education element or supportive element has to be put in place to showcase how people can move from unemployment into happiness and meaningful employment. My suggestion, which relates especially to care workers, is that there need to be role models working within these organisations.

People need to relate actively to the people who are giving the messages. When a teacher who is middle class and generally does not really know what it is like to be in a DEIS school stands in front of students in a DEIS school, the hard cases step back and say, " I am not listening to this person, they do not have a clue about me." It is a defensive mindset. The caseworker is seen as the State and as the person who is trying to restrict them or tell them they are wrong and acting with the teacher mindset. In the context of casework I suggest having more people working in that environment who have come through and come out of poverty. That path could be supported, and perhaps being the caseworker could be the job path. Initiatives could be developed with role models where people can experience at first hand how to move out and where they can get to know people who have moved out of unemployment.

Much work also has to be done around the relationship. I have read some of the critical work around JobPath caseworkers and the relationship. This is a hard thing to change. When a person is being evaluated by a caseworker and the outcome could be a potential loss of benefit payments, it is very hard to make this a positive relationship. I do not have the answers for that but providing people with exposure to others who have succeeded in those environments may support that.

With regard to the timing issue, it is paramount to remove the restriction on the back to education allowance. If a person has been in work, he or she must be on benefits for three, six or nine months, depending on which benefit, before he or she can move onto the back to education allowance. If a person goes onto JobPath in November, he or she cannot to go to college in September because of being on a scheme. While there is restriction on the back to education allowance, it needs to be clarified whether it counts towards JobPath. I am aware that if a person is not on a benefit within that period, he or she is not allowed to access the back to education allowance. It means that if a person is in work, he or she cannot leave that work to further his or her education. It is an either-or scenario. The person can either stay in a low-paid job or choose education. If the person chooses education over the low-paid job he or she will not get support to do that. The State is communicating that work is much more important than education. This restriction has to be removed.

The change in the casework around back to education needs to be reflected upon. We have a situation now where people are required to justify the degrees they are doing. People are being asked about what jobs they will get after their degree. I blindly went into university with no clue and thought I was going to get kicked out of Trinity College Dublin in the first year. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I saw how the lives of a number of other individuals had been transformed, so I trusted the system. If I had been asked what job I was going to get, I would not have known. Asking a person to justify an art history degree in terms of job outcomes is not possible. We are all aware that a degree increases a person's likelihood of good income so it should be taken as a given, whether it is a STEM degree or not, but people are still being pushed into certain types of jobs.