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

My Department is committed, under Pathways to Work, to incentivise the take-up of activation and job opportunities, including implementing sanctions for failure to engage with the activation process. The Social Welfare Act 2010, enacted in December of that year, provided for the introduction of reduced rates of payment to people who did not engage with the State’s employment services. Reduced rates of payment are a means of encouraging jobseekers to engage with activation measures and to take advantage of the supports offered by the Department to co-assist them in securing employment. Reduced rates are only applied where a jobseeker fails to engage as requested - and following at least two warnings - with the Department’s employment services.

There are long-standing and separate, unrelated sanctions to deal with failure by a jobseeker to comply with and satisfy the qualifying conditions relating to the jobseeker scheme. Those conditions are being available for and genuinely seeking work. A range of sanctions, including a full payment suspension or disallowance of the jobseeker claim, can be applied in circumstances where this condition is not met. In the interests of natural justice, a jobseeker who fails to participate in the activation process is given both written and verbal warnings and an opportunity to comply before a reduced rate of payment is applied. Furthermore, jobseekers can, through co-operation with the activation service of my Department, benefit from early re-instatement of the full rate of jobseeker’s payment.

The legislation underpinning the application of reduced rates of payment is the Social Welfare Act 2010. All decisions on the application of reduced rates of payment are made by deciding officers of the Department and are based on all the available evidence and the circumstances of each case. The jobseeker can appeal the decision through the social welfare appeals office. The number of cases where reduced rates have been applied is detailed in the table I have provided. Typically, reduced rates tend to last for a relatively limited duration of only a few weeks and at any given time approximately 1,200 jobseekers are on a reduced rate of payment. This number must be viewed against the approximately 300,000 people who are subject to activation in a given year and come within the scope of the reduced rate provisions of the 2010 Act. At any given time, it might be 0.4% of jobseekers who face reduced payments.

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