Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I must apologise because I have another appointment at 12 noon and, unfortunately, I must leave the meeting. The exchange has been most informative. The figures for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown are replicated throughout the country and it has been the experience in my own area. Deputy Brady has received information on LES in replies to parliamentary questions and I have had some communications from the Department. Together they give rise to a scenario where a central element of the rationale presented to the committee by departmental officials for JobPath is flatly contradicted. To the question of whether the programme has affected referrals, the answer is indisputably "Yes". According to what we were told at our most recent meeting, it is as if two different organisations were dealing with two different sets of the population and there was no conflict whatsoever. That is a matter of concern because the committee's role is to ensure the money spent on social protection is properly spent and we are getting value for money. All this gives rise to fundamental questions about the rationale for the decision taken in 2011 in the first place.

I was also taken aback by Ms Kavanagh's comment in reply to Deputy Brady that there was no consultation whatsoever. In my naivety, I had thought that when the big decision was taken to set up another agency and hand some of the work over to a private agency that the existing State organisations would have been contacted and the Department would have asked them if they could do the job and whether they had sufficient resources and, if not, what additional resources they needed. I thought that was the process. The decision was taken at a time public expenditure was severely curtailed and one would have thought there would have been a forensic examination into how to get this job done rather than simply handing it over to a private operator for the sake perhaps of being seen to do something different.

Reference was made to vacancies on CE schemes throughout the country. To what extent would that issue be alleviated if we got rid of the ridiculous rule whereby somebody signed up to JobPath cannot avail of a CE scheme?