Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The one statistic the Minister did not give me is the one in which I am most interested, namely, the number of long-term unemployed people who have been taken out of the system as a direct result of the measures to which she referred. In regard to JobBridge, the Minister indicated recently in reply to a parliamentary question I submitted that 61% of JobBridge participants leave the scheme within five months to take up permanent employment. Has any analysis been done of the types of jobs these people are securing and whether they are appropriate to their qualifications? In the case of those aged under 25, are people simply leaving a situation where they are working 40 hours per week for €3.75 per hour to take up a job where they might be getting €8 or €9 per hour?

Does the Minister agree that much of the anecdotal evidence regarding JobBridge shows that it is not equivalent in any way to an apprenticeship scheme in the properly understood sense of the word and, in many cases, is simply a matter of securing cheap labour for employers? Will she comment on how we arrived at a situation of voluntary internships whereby a person under the age of 25 is paid the princely sum of €2.75 per hour for a 40-hour week?

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