Dr. Ray Griffin:

The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is over 70 years old. More than any other Department, it has held us together as a society, often through tough times. We have enormous respect for the Department. The forming of that Department and its considerable achievements over its life in dealing with poverty and building social cohesion are a substantial political achievement that for each generation needs to be renewed against strong opposition. That is an achievement made in Leinster House.

We have a world-class system of social protection in many ways. It was the envy of many other countries until recently when we started photocopying failing models' homework and replicating them unsympathetically here. We need to get back to a human-capital-centric approach. That is the approach which brought us to full employment. When we are at international conferences, we are told we are one of the few countries which experiences full employment from time to time. We have proved Irish people are not workshy. We have gotten our long-term unemployment rates down to negligible levels. That demonstrates that the ideology that people are workshy and we need to work them over is not the problem. The problems of our labour market are the problems of our economy, which is about industrial policy and the creation of jobs. We need to get back to our core values in this area which are held by most of the people working in the system who we have encountered in our research.

Research by Dr. Rod Hick of the University of Cardiff suggests the policy choices made here are Irish policy choices. They are encoded in the deal we cut. It was on the Irish side that the aspiration for this form of activation came. It was not mandated. We have a policy choice again, especially as we crest back into an era of near full employment. The core target of JobPath, namely, long-term worklessness, is usually and more efficiently improved by a community-based response. Such a response would focus on particular communities which experience unemployment and particular drivers of their unemployment, as well as geographic blackspots. They are long-term developmental drivers with community activities. There is a principle of community development which is nothing for us without us. The JobPath scheme is being done to people, not with people. In our research, all the 121 unemployed people to whom we have talked, attempted to navigate their way out of unemployment and were looking for help. They existed in their own personal labour market, not the broad labour market. They had specific geographic and educational restrictions, as well as aspirations, that they were trying to fulfil through the labour market. They need to be supported in a meaningful and human-capital-centric way.

It is our sense, which has been relayed to us by many professional insiders in the Department, both at office and policy level, that much of what is being done would not survive judicial scrutiny. This relies on the practical reality that unemployed people do not have access to our courts. Sanctioning is against the principle of natural justice. The sanctioners are judge, jury and executioner. There is no sense of proportionality. The natural justice cycle of clear, unambiguous notice, as well as formal warning, representation advocacy and appeal are not intact. The level of oversight and transparency is a disgrace. Little bits of information are figured out through parliamentary questions. If they were proud of this system, it would be open to scrutiny and reporting. We know from our county-by-county data that it does not appear that they work to a consistent standard. What really delivers this is the high level of appeals which are successful. If they worked to a consistent standard, there would not be that level of successful appealing.

Another concern is that the case officers working in JobPath are not appropriate individuals to work with a vulnerable population. Typically, they are on short-term contracts because the JobPath contract is for only four years. Clearly, they cannot be employed for a longer timeframe. They are paid for a poorly thought-out system that is called a performance model but in reality is more of a luck-based one. Essentially, if one is in a highly liquid labour market like Dublin, one has a good chance of placing people in any job. However if one is in Mayo, Kerry or Wexford, one can forget about it. Typically, the kind of people who are case officers are business and marketing graduates usually with an emphasis on sales experience. While JobPath has doubled the number of case workers, this is done without reference to their capability character of contract situations. We have a fear that this opens the State up to liability downstream.

Our sense is that JobPath does not work. It damages users at the point of use and in the long term. It damages everybody in the labour market. If one thinks about the massaging of CVs, companies will no longer trust these because they suspect they have not been authentically written. One cannot hoodwink employers through an office of the State. Our sense is that the use of outsource providers takes those with a public service ethos out of the loop and, thereby, reduces standards. It is expensive upfront. Based on our concerns about judicial scrutiny, there may be downstream liabilities to it.