John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of our guests and thank them for their very powerful presentations. It is always interesting to get an outside view through a different lens. I have looked at this matter comprehensively in recent years and have heard all of the stories which have, unfortunately, been dismissed by two Ministers. The Taoiseach, when he was Minister for Social Protection, dismissed them and the current Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, has also dismissed them.

Today's presentations, based on interviews with participants, shows that many identified JobPath as the State deliberately attempting to lower people's expectations of work. When the then Minister for Social Protection, now the Taoiseach, came before this committee previously, he let the mask slip when questioned on JobPath. He said that people need to give up their idea of a dream job. We are talking here about people with qualifications, including teachers who are engaged in part time employment because of the nature of contracts or doing substitute work and so on. That is the ideology that is driving this and that is coming through from people participating in JobPath and also from Ministers.

Ms Greene made some interesting observations about the people with whom she engaged, including a 62 year old man who had left school at the age of ten and who had been unemployed for 20 years. He engaged with the services, not in the context of the narrow employment-only focus or objective but in terms of a skill set that was identified to suit him. It was interesting that JobPath was able to take that person who was engaging, in terms of doing woodwork, ICT courses and learning other skills that were needed to get him back into the workforce, out of that setting. He is one of the 15,000 people who have been called back up to engage with the programme a second time. Is that a common occurrence? How does that come about? It is absolutely appalling.

Our guests referred to people being referred to JobPath and then being referred from JobPath back to the adult guidance service and how that comes about. It was interesting to hear their analysis in terms of duplication and so forth. I ask them to elaborate further on that. We have heard evidence from other groups on these issues. I have engaged with the local employment service, which does phenomenal work across the State. Its representatives have told me that if that service had been given additional resources, it would have been able to expand and take on the work now being done by the private companies, Turas Nua and Seetec. Since the introduction of JobPath, the number of people being referred to the local employment service has gone down, year on year, because more people are going into the privatised setting. Do our guests have any figures in that regard? Could Ms Greene supply figures in respect of the people who were referred to her service between 2016 and 2018? Has there been a decrease in the numbers being referred to her since JobPath began?

The Chairman will allow questions first and then allow the delegates to respond. How does the adult guidance service differ? What occurs when someone engages with Ms Greene? We know what individuals have to do when they go to JobPath. As we know from the evidence given by Mr. Rudd and others, at the best of times they have to go at times that do not suit them. When an individual engages with the service, are there regular meetings? Is there a weekly meeting? We are aware no sanctions are imposed on individuals.