Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 7 November 2019
Public Accounts Committee
2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms
9:00 am
Mr. John McKeon:
That is because, following a tender competition in which everything was benchmarked, we set the fees based on improving employment outcomes relative to the status quo. Employment progression outcomes for people who were unemployed for more than 12 months stood at 12% so we assume that 12% would have got into work in any event and we build that assumption into the pricing model. We went further than that and increased the progression rate by 60% by basing prices on 16% of people getting into employment without help. We are paying for everybody because it is very difficult to evaluate which person would have got in and which would not, but the prices were set based on an assumption that people would get employment.
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