Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is an extraordinary situation that an official employed in the Department of Social Protection makes a recommendation that a person be allowed to take up a scheme, a decision that is in the best interests of the individual, and the recommendation is overridden by a private company such as Seetec. This company receives remuneration for taking people onto JobPath. It has a vested interest in keeping people on JobPath because it gets a payment for it: a registration payment when it brings a person onto JobPath and four retrospective payments if they keep them in a job for a longer period. Seetec has a financial incentive to keep many people on JobPath, whereas the Minister's Department was looking, in this and many other cases, at the best interests of the individual. In this instance I am talking about a person who is a bit older, maybe in their 50s, and it does not always suit them to sit around waiting for interviews that JobPath might send them on for God knows what kind of jobs. Here is a valuable, local community role they could fill and the Department of Social Protection is being overridden by a private company that has vested interests.

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