Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I will not take up much time. First, this is a really good document. I have read it a few times and I am really interested in the figures it contains. I thank Mr. Ian Power, as well as Ms Nuala Whelan and Mr. Mick Creedon of the Ballymun Jobs Centre, for their attendance and the presentation. On reading through the documents and on hearing the response from the Department, I note the fact that 43,000 people participated in JobBridge and 61% of people progressed into paid jobs. One element that stuck out about the presentation was the person - I do not know whether it was a young man or a young woman - who said that the first meeting he or she had in Ballymun about the Youth Guarantee scheme might well have turned out to be the most productive and in many ways the most important meeting he or she had ever had. That is a huge statement for anybody to make - to refer to it as the most important meeting in one's life. I am sure these people are very young; I do not know how old they were.

Any person that gets any job has his or her whole life turned around and becomes a completely different person. It leads the person into being able to get up in the morning with something to go to. It gives the person self-esteem. Most importantly, it gives a person a few bob in his or her pocket that belongs to him or her. That makes people very independent.

All of this is very interesting. I am tired of listening to the idea that people were marched into taking up JobBridge and coasted into working for €50 extra and were exploited. We have heard stories told at senior level in the last couple of weeks and days. I could sit here and tell five stories of young people I know personally who were in JobBridge and have all ended up in full-time jobs. Of those five, three had never worked before while two had worked in what I would call very mediocre jobs. For two of those people, their lives have been turned around completely. They have gone back to education at night supported by the companies that are now fully employing them. Whether it is 61% or 1%, if one person in every hundred gets a job, it is thousands of people. If that one person changes his or her life, who he or she is and where he or she has come from, it is a success. If anybody is exploiting JobBridge, it is the people themselves as the survey has said who could not agree or disagree whether it was a good experience. The 43% of people who could not agree or disagree were not marched in to do the JobBridge course. They went voluntarily. Like anybody who takes up a job, one either likes it or one does not. That is my base. One either likes one's job or one does not. If one does not like it, one clears out of it and does something else.

I emphasise that the point being missed is as follows. I hear the idea that this is not a real job all the time on the doorstep and from different parties in the Dáil and Seanad and I am taken aback. If that one person was in my family and his or her life was changed to lead him or her in a different direction, I would consider it all to have been worthwhile. We can fish with numbers, do everything we like and disagree or agree, but when one person gets a job, his or her life changes completely. That is the positive thing that has happened with JobBridge and I know many of the participants including people in my own family. It changes people forever and, as such, we should not sit here and criticise whether it was 4%, 5% or 10%. A person's life changes when he or she gets a job.

I thank the witnesses for the presentation. I would like to ask in more depth about the National Youth Council's funding, how it gets it and who it gets it from, but we do not have time.