Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 November 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Chapter 11 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 12 - JobPath Employment Activation Service
Chapter 13 - Actuarial Review of Social Insurance Fund
Chapter 14 - Overpayments of Age-Related Jobseeker's Allowance
Chapter 20 - PRSI Contributions by the Self-Employed
2017 Social Insurance Fund

9:00 am

Mr. John McKeon:

They do. They provide workshops on what to expect in work. One of the things we ask them to do - the feedback, our own inspections and the customer satisfaction research indicate they are doing it - is to stay in contact with the person during the first three months. They make regular contact with them to try to help them through. We know that if one can get over the first three months, as the Deputy can see, the tail-off flattens off quite considerably. Getting to the first three months is actually the critical thing. We do ask them to provide those services. Our feedback from our own contacts with the people involved and our own research indicate that they do. The incentive, in terms of the financial payment, is also there to encourage them to do it because obviously they get a relatively small payment, all things considered, for getting somebody to three months, but they get a much bigger payment for getting somebody to 12 months.