Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

One of the employees, Brian, stated:

I was working in Ballyogan for one year and 11 months and I was told on Wednesday, 27 March that I would no longer be needed on 1 April. Now there is an intern doing my job. This intern is being paid from the Department of Social Protection and I had to sign on too, costing the State an extra €238 every week while Oxigen are laughing all the way to the bank.

That is a very serious example of abuse of the scheme, and there is widespread anecdotal evidence of that.

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