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

As I stated, I received a partial freedom of information response within which I obtained some of the briefing documents with which the Tánaiste is provided when answering questions, one of which was from November 2013. At that point, in the event of a question being asked about what control measures the Department of Social Protection had in place to monitor internships, the Department deemed the voluntary nature of JobBridge to be an important matter in this regard and advised it was an important part of the control measures and criteria in place to protect the interns and to ensure the integrity of the JobBridge scheme. The intern could, at any stage, leave the internship if he or she so wished. Why did the Tánaiste decide to jettison this important safeguard just two months later, in January 2014, when she announced that JobBridge would be mandatory for young people under the Youth Guarantee?

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