Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank our guests witnesses for their interesting presentations, which contained useful analysis. Two points jumped out at me, the first of which relates to Indecon's recommendation that we should move to an open, competitive public procurement model. I immediately thought of the national children's hospital, broadband and CervicalCheck. What a great model. Look at the results it has already provided. What a recommendation. I really liked the challenge to the idea that we must move to a competitive public procurement model because otherwise we would fly in the face of perceived EU requirements under competition policies and rules. Our guests have put forward a good challenge to that.

I just mentioned to Deputy Brady something that we had not done yet, namely, invite Indecon to attend in order that its representatives might discuss the recommendations in the report. All of the boxes it states must be ticked by services in reducing unemployment locally are already being ticked by existing schemes, which have had fantastic results. Before the for-profit model of employment activation was introduced via JobPath and so on, there was a 6.7% reduction in unemployment between 2012 and 2015 through the methods provided by our guests' organisations. Compare that with the reduction achieved by Seetec and Turas Nua. These figures beg the question of where Indecon gets the idea that we must move to a public procurement model.

I will ask a question and perhaps someone involved in the job clubs will answer it. The submission contains a list of client groups that present with multiple barriers, for example, limited education, no work history, homelessness, low literacy skills, age, distance, ill health and addictions. Disability is not mentioned. Will someone comment on ability programmes and how they are funded? If they are not funded by the organisations represented, why is that the case? How is disability addressed?

It is very clear that the model the witnesses have presented to us is one that works with communities and human beings as opposed to a punitive for-profit model that leads to an "I, Daniel Blake" result in many cases. We recently saw evidence of how Seetec and Turas Nua were panning out for our communities. Witnesses have appeared before us, with a scheme from Wicklow describing the detrimental impact of the privatisation of labour activation. It does not work. It is a for-profit model and is not about the people or their communities. Clearly, Indecon's report tells us that our existing model gets results. If it is not broken, why try to fix it? All of this is being done because it is ideological. There is an idea that we must do what the EU tells us and undertake everything on a competitive public procurement basis. The evidence provided in these submissions refutes that. I thank our guests for providing it.