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

People are made aware of the complaints procedure, or at least they should be. I will instruct my officials to ensure that is the case. I get some complaints to my office and they vary in nature. They go from people who just did not like the case officer or had a communications or personality clash to people who are just shocked that somebody is engaging with them one-to-one for the first time and trying to procure a job for them. Some people just do not like that. There are people who have become institutionalised, going from welfare to training scheme to CE scheme and repeating that process on a carousel of dependency. For some of these people it is quite a shock when somebody tells them they will find a job.

I should point out that jobseeker's allowance is conditional on a person seeking full-time work and a job should be taken if it is on offer. If a person does not want to work, it is always possible for him or her to sign off. There are many people who get up in the morning every day, going to a job they may not like because that is how they get the money to pay bills and look after their family. These people pay taxes and fund the CE and welfare system. It is not okay for some people to say they do not want to work or they will keep claiming welfare until they get a job they believe they want or suits them.

JobPath is not the overriding reason for the real and genuine difficulty in filling places on community employment schemes. Community employment supervisors have got it all wrong if they think JobPath is the main reason. We are finding it difficult to fill community employment places because unemployment has halved in the past four years. In the same period, the number of community employment, Tús and Gateway placements has almost doubled. The number of people who are available has halved and the number of placements has doubled.

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