Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The aim of JobBridge is to assist individuals to bridge the gap between unemployment and the world of work. JobBridge has made very significant progress since it came into operation in July 2011. As of 27 June 2013, 18,587 internship placements had commenced, with 5,934 participants in active internships and 1,936 internship posts advertised and available on the JobBridge website. The independent evaluation conducted by Indecon Economic Consultants which I published recently has found that 61% of interns who finish placements secure employment within five months. These progression outcomes are exceptionally positive and compare very favourably with European averages for internships.

We believe these outcomes are due, at least in part, to the voluntary nature of the relationship between the host organisation and the intern and to the careful design and active management of JobBridge by the Department. One of the strong features of internships is that part of the intern experience is in interns applying for and succeeding in getting an internship place. The internship is designed to stay as close to the acquisition of a permanent job as possible. For example, as part of this design, we ask host organisations to provide meaningful work for interns, to commit to a standard agreement detailing expected learning outcomes for the intern, to provide mentoring for each intern and assign a mentor to the intern for this purpose, to submit monthly reports to the Department and, at the end of the internship, to complete an end of evaluation questionnaire and provide each intern with a reference.

In asking host organisations to observe best practice guidelines, we are requesting them to invest considerable time and effort in the intern. This investment pays dividends by increasing the value of the internship and is a major factor in the high rate of progression of interns into employment.

We have carried out 2,200 on-site monitoring visits, arising from which 23 organisations have been excluded from JobBridge.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

Given the importance attached to the quality of the internship experience, the Department actively monitors internships to check whether host organisations are conforming with its specification of best practice. In cases in which it is deemed that an organisation is not offering an internship of sufficient quality the Department reserves the right to exclude that organisation from further access to JobBridge and, in some cases, to terminate existing internships. However, it is important to highlight that the overwhelming majority of organisations are operating in conformance with the scheme design. In fact, more than 7,500 host organisations have participated in the scheme and, as outlined above, just 23 organisations have been excluded from further access to the scheme.

See this speech in context