Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that and look forward to reading the policy. We will see how well it stacks up alongside some of the party's other policies on the economy. It appears now that the Sinn Féin approach to JobBridge generally is that it ought to be scrapped but I understand that the policy proposals published today make suggestions as to how it can be improved or replaced by something very similar. I look forward to considering the Deputy's policy proposals. I also recall that the Sinn Féin leader, Deputy Adams, tabled a parliamentary question asking for the JobBridge scheme to be extended to people who are not on the live register. He did so, I would suggest, on the grounds that he knows, as do many others, that it has been a success. Youth unemployment has fallen by a third since 2012. Under the Pathways to Work strategy, a focused effort has been made to reduce youth unemployment. We are also implementing the Youth Guarantee, having launched First Steps and JobsPlus Youth a fortnight ago. That work is paying off and the facts are there to prove it; they are staring the Deputy in the face. There has been a significant reduction in youth unemployment, from 31% in 2012 at the height of the crisis, to 21.6% at the end of 2014. There have been 37,341 JobBridge placements to date and 6,172 people are currently on internships.

There are two points about JobBridge that must be stressed, the first of which is the fact that the scheme is voluntary, both for the host organisation or employer and the individual intern. Second, an individual must have been out of work for three of the previous six months in order to qualify. Issues have been raised by the Deputy regarding the monitoring of JobBridge and his concerns in this regard are legitimate. None of us wants to see an abuse of the JobBridge programme, least of all the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection. If a complaint is made by an intern, employee or someone else, it is investigated and taken very seriously. There have been almost 10,000 monitoring visits since JobBridge started. Of these, 97.5% of internships visited were found to be satisfactory. That means that over one in four placements was monitored. It was not just a dip-in monitoring exercise, but was very extensive. However, out of over 11,000 host organisations, only 44 have been banned indefinitely, while ten have been banned for a lesser period of time. That represents 0.5% against a backdrop of thousands of monitoring visits. Any individual who wishes to report a suspected abuse of the JobBridge scheme should contact the JobBridge team directly. Deputies can see, from the figures I have given, that complaints are investigated and where a breach is found, severe action is taken.

The scheme has been successful and it is right to quote the Indecon report in that regard, although Deputy Ó Snodaigh quoted selectively from it. The aforementioned independent report found that 60% of those who took part were in employment within five months.

Many also go into further education, training, reskilling or schemes like community employment. The evaluation also found that 96% of host organisations would recommend JobBridge to another employer and 89% of interns stated that JobBridge had given them new skills. It is not a replacement for employment but it is something that can be of huge value in increasing people's self-confidence, giving them an opportunity to gain quality work experience and establish a network of contacts. It is not a job but it takes people a long way along the road to achieving confidence in the market and the workplace.

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