Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Pathways to Work initiative has been developed to deliver a new approach to the provision of services to unemployed people. The key objective is to deliver a service that supports people who are unemployed to find a pathway back to employment and thereby reduce both the average duration of unemployment and the number of people who are long-term unemployed. A detailed project plan for the establishment of the new service was approved by the Government and published in June of last year, and I am pleased to say the Department has made significant progress in implementing this plan. The next significant milestone is the pilot implementation of a new one-stop-shop or integrated service in four offices, and I expect these to be implemented, on schedule, in May or June this year. They are already being rolled out on a pilot basis.

The new service will be staffed by people currently working within the Department, including the approximately 1,700 staff who recently transferred into the Department from FÁS and the community welfare service and who bring with them significant experience in the one-to-one case management of clients. Approximately 400 of the staff who transferred are involved in the activation of unemployed people. We have taken over the local employment services, which have particular expertise in this area. Most of the transferred staff have received professional training in employment guidance. Many of the 1,000 staff of the community welfare service have experience of working in a case-management capacity. I acknowledge that, given the level of unemployment, additional staff will need to be deployed to activation or case-management activities and that appropriate training will be required for staff with such duties. In this regard, the Department has its own in-house staff development unit. The unit will take the lead in developing and organising the relevant training. Initially, training will focus on the competencies deemed necessary for the case-management role.

It is unlikely, however, that redeployment within the Department or even from the wider public service will provide sufficient staff to fully resource the new service. Accordingly, in the context of the Croke Park agreement, we will probably have to stop sub-contracting case management and activation services.

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