Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

JobPath is a relatively new approach whereby the Department has procured additional resources under contract to enable us to provide high-quality case managed employment support services for people who are long-term unemployed. JobPath supplements the internal case management capacity of the Department's Intreo service and the local employment service. In the past year this additional capacity has enabled the Department to provide an intensive employment support and advisory service for some 60,000 long-term unemployed persons who would otherwise not have received such a service owing to Intreo's capacity limitations. While some observers have raised questions about the use of contractors to procure this additional capacity, the number of complaints from participants has been relatively low. To date, we have received only 145 complaints. This is 0.2% of the total number of people who have engaged with the service. The majority of the complaints were about people's initial reluctance to engage with the service having been unemployed for some time. All complaints are taken seriously and have been resolved or are in the process of being resolved, where possible.

Other issues that have been raised with my Department concern such matters as people wanting to take part in community employment,CE, schemes in preference to JobPath, the application of reduced payment rates to people who refuse to participate in the service and data security. All of these issues are being resolved. For example, a protocol is now in place to enable people to take up CE placements rather than commence on JobPath where a placement is available to them. The rules for the application of reduced payment rates are identical to those that apply in the case of all other activation services and any decision on reduced payment rates is taken by officials of my Department and never by the JobPath service providers.

As is the case with other contractors such as post offices, branch offices and CE scheme sponsors, the JobPath service providers may only use jobseekers' data for the purposes of delivering the services contracted by my Department. Both providers are registered with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner and subject to the provisions of data protection legislation.

On service quality generally, the contract provides for the delivery of a specified standard of service. Payments to contractors are contingent on the providers satisfying inspectors from my Department that they are meeting this service standard. In addition, the providers must attain a satisfactory customer rating in independent customer satisfaction research.

While the contract is at an early stage of implementation, feedback to date has been positive and initial indications in terms of employment outcomes are encouraging.

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