Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy should acknowledge that every country with an unemployment problem develops work experience programmes as part of its response. The OECD has been very strong in advocating that Ireland needs to have a wider range of these sort of programmes that give people a bridge from whatever they did in school or college to the employment environment. Those schemes are continually evaluated by the Department of Social Protection which has weeded out cases of abuse. These work experience programmes prevail in all countries with strong activation policies that provide quality opportunities for people to progress in their careers. JobBridge is no different; more than 60% have progressed to unemployment from the programme. A wide variety of employers is engaged and many companies have put substantial amounts of money into developing the training programmes that give people genuinely good work experience on these programmes. They are an important and valuable part of the response to unemployment.

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