John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is competition and we have evidence on that from people within the LES as well as people in other services such as adult guidance. People who had been engaging with those schemes and were then referred to JobPath ultimately ended up back at their starting point a year later. They were taken out of training and education schemes that were working and put sitting in front of a computer screen for a year only to then find themselves back in the LES. We know there are difficulties in CE schemes. I cited those already in my opening comments, including the number of vacancies. The Minister stated there are 800 staff attached to all of these services, including JobPath. She did not go into much detail, however. She did state that when JobPath was rolled out in 2015 it was not possible to scale up the existing services such as the LES and similar schemes.

Now is the time to start scaling up those schemes because there is a distinct difference in the staff. I am not going slate any employees in Turas Nua, Seetec or anywhere else. There are all doing a job. The level of training of staff in the LES and job clubs is second to none, however. There is a high turnover of staff in Turas Nua and Seetec and that seriously impacts on delivery for people on those schemes. There is an opportunity to upscale the LES, jobs clubs and other services now. We all agree that things have to change and now is the time to start looking at scaling up the 23 LESs and the job clubs. We all agree those are working. I am not convinced how beneficial it is for people to engage with Turas Nua and Seetec. We could argue all afternoon about how successful those initiatives are. The vast majority of people, however, who have got jobs would have got jobs one way or another. There are many people who-----