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

I might just take 30 seconds because I am about to give the Deputy the answer. I am sorry I did not give the answer in the first part.

To date 60,000 jobseekers on the live register have engaged with JobPath. Of these, 499 are on a reduced rate, of whom only 96 are under 25 years of age. Again these figures are under 1% of the people engaged with JobPath.

Given these relatively low levels of reduced payment rates, one cannot draw any meaningful conclusions as to whether engagement with the JobPath service results in a higher rate of penalty application.

To the extent that the data can be interpreted, it would suggest that engagement with JobPath does not increase the likelihood of the payment being reduced than somebody who engaged with Intreo or the LES. This is to be expected as there has been no policy change with regard to the implementation of reduced rates of payment.

See this speech in context