Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chair for his contribution and I also thank the Deputies for outlining their issues. I do understand those issues, by the way. My officials will attest that the questions the Deputies have asked me were the same questions as I asked my officials. I want to be clear that this initiative is not about profit but about the service we provide to those people who need assistance in upskilling, guidance or whatever advice they may need to get them into sustainable and good-quality jobs.

Turning to job clubs, the amalgamation of the local employment service and job clubs into one service was a key recommendation of the Indecon reports on the local employment services and jobs clubs. It was recognised that there was close interaction and complementarity between the services and that amalgamation would reduce administrative duplication and support a more effective and efficient overall employment support service. The request for tender is designed to ensure that all competent service providers of appropriate scale can bid competitively. For some independent job clubs, there will be a challenge in bidding for much larger contracts in respect of services, scale and geographic coverage.

My officials have visited all existing providers and have encouraged them to work collaboratively, and that is the important word here. There must be collaboration with other service providers in their sector and areas. Therefore, the request for tender encourages providers to explore the possibility of collaborating with other similar bodies to submit a joint tender. Under this request for tender, tenderers working together and submitting a joint bid may satisfy the minimum turnover criteria in the RFT as a whole. Again, therefore, there is an advantage to working together and there is also an advantage to the service when people work together and more collaboratively.

Regarding the request for tender, 90% of the funding is in respect of securing the service and the individual agreeing to the personal programme. The individuals concerned get 90% of their payments then and the remaining 10% when they secure employment. Turning to the job club in Ballaghaderreen, representatives from that club came to Dublin and attended the consultation with the consultants. We have certainly taken on board their views. I have to say that some people do not want to change, and I can understand that there is a reluctance to change. Having looked at this issue, though, and examined it very carefully, I am very clear that I want to ensure that it is the end-users who benefit.

Having visited local job clubs in my area and spoken to the people rolling out the employability service, I have every confidence that they will be well positioned to put in a good tender and I have no reason to believe that they should not be successful. I genuinely believe that, because we worked extremely hard with them before the request for tender went out to help them to understand this process. The tender is out there now. We will learn from this process when the applications come in and before we look to the next requests for tender due to be issued before the end of the year. I think this process will instil confidence in the providers. Ultimately, they are providing a service to people and giving them the confidence and advice to help them to take up a job. There is no reason, therefore, why the service providers should not have that same confidence in themselves to win this tender.