Mr. James Doorley:

As Ian Power said, when we were starting out, we found a lot of young people saying that experience was a huge issue for them. As such, we obviously support the JobBridge scheme. Our report was primarily qualitative. We wanted to get the experience of young people. The Indecon report is extensive. However, while there is a great deal of good data in it and there were certain questions it asked, there were questions from our perspective which it did not ask. There were things it did not look at. As such, we welcome the fact that a new report is being prepared. It is important that it is not just based on the data and that we must engage with the participants. We found that there were many things of which we were not aware until we spoke to young people who had participated in the scheme. One of the things we would like to see in the second report is something Indecon recommended itself. It said we need a control group and to compare JobBridge with people who did not participate it. Saying it is either 61% or 27% is not possible until we have that control group. That would be useful, as we would then learn what the added value of JobBridge was. There is a question as to whether some of those people would have got jobs without the intervention of a scheme. I acknowledge that the Department has done that in a range of other schemes and it is useful for it to know whether the schemes are adding value or blocking people.

On the First Steps internship scheme, we have concerns about any internship scheme. As Paul Carroll said earlier, JobBridge is voluntary. It may be that it has changed but the initial design of First Steps indicated that young people would be selected and told that they were now participating in the scheme. We are very clear that we support young people getting work experience, which many of them want. However, there is something about the concept of internships. Ross Perlin wrote a very good book about internships and their history. The whole idea of an internship or apprenticeship is about the exchange of skills and progression. The idea is that one does an internship on the basis that while one is now working in some respects for no remuneration, one is gaining skills. One can then say that when one finishes the internship, one is going somewhere, will get a job and will progress.

In our report, that motivation came out very clearly. When I spoke to young people, the key thing was to get experience and get on the jobs ladder. If young people are told they must participate in First Steps without that support and the sense that they are going somewhere, we think it would be detrimental. We think it needs a lot of work to work out how it will be achieved.

In response to Senator O'Donnell, in the report we found that about one third were dissatisfied. We want it to be better for more people. I spoke to young people who had very good experiences and those who had experiences that were not as good where bad things happened during internships. Sometimes it was as a result of their own understanding of what they were engaging in. The Senator is right in that some of them were in the workforce for the first time. From our point of view, it is about how we can improve what is there. JobBridge has certainly delivered for some people but given that we are spending roughly about €80 million per annum and the State is running the internship scheme, we need to deliver more.

In respect of some other points-----