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

The complaints process is as follows: a person initially makes a complaint to the service provider and if he or she is not happy with the outcome, he or she can make a further complaint to my Department. That is the number of 145 to which I referred. It is possible that many of those who have contacted the Deputy have not made a complaint to the Department or JobPath, but they can do so, if they wish. If they are not happy with how things go, they can also complain to the Ombudsman.

The independent customer satisfaction survey is under way and we expect results before the end of the year. As the Deputy will be aware, if the providers fail to secure a score of three or more on a scale of one to five, the payments made to the contractors will be reduced by up to 15%. There is a penalty for providers should they perform poorly in the customer satisfaction survey.

The condition to be met to receive jobseeker's allowance is that a person must be actively seeking full-time work. It may not necessarily be the job he or she wants, but it is a requirement that a person take up employment, if he or she can. If he or she does not wish to do so, he or she can sign off.

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