Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

JobBridge has been in operation for a little over two years. A total of 21,000 people have taken on a JobBridge internship. I commissioned the examination of how the scheme was working for people. We have extensive web interaction in real time with both the interns and the host organisations, so if there are problems we get onto them immediately. We also get many messages from people on social media sites. If they raise issues with us, we investigate them immediately.

Is the Deputy saying there should be no internships in the public sector? If that is what he is suggesting, I believe he is wrong. There is a great deal of experience, of a very high quality internship type, available in the public sector. It is for six or nine months and is for people who cannot get a foot in the labour market. They cannot get a job because they have no experience and they cannot get experience because they cannot get a job. The six or nine months' experience overcomes that problem, which I acknowledge is a particular feature of the recession. It is a response to the terrible situation I see, as somebody working in third level with many young people, in which people emerge with all sorts of qualifications from secondary and third level education and cannot get a job because they have no experience, but they cannot get experience because they cannot get a job. They are stuck in this catch-22. If the public sector can help in a careful way, that is appropriate.

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