Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In a letter she wrote to the Ceann Comhairle to justify her refusal to answer a similar question in the past, the Minister stated that host organisations participate in the scheme on a voluntary basis and receive no payment or other benefit from the State in respect of that participation: no benefit. What does she call 39 hours of work each week undertaken by the JobBridge participants at the expense of the Department of Social Protection? Given that JobBridge allows employers to put off recruiting paid staff for up to nine months, this amounts to a benefit of wage avoidance for those companies.

There is also no doubt that real job creation is being postponed in this very manner. According to the Minister's own Indecon report, which she often quotes, 29% of those companies which are honest enough to admit it, stated when surveyed that in the absence of JobBridge, they would have offered paid employment to their interns. That is just a level of displacement and wage avoidance. Is it not illogical for the Minister to state that she cannot publish the names of these companies, when in the first instance, they are published on the website when they are offering internships?

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