Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. Up to now, all contracts for local employment services were issued for a single 12-month period and rolled over on an annual basis.

Many of these contracts have been in place with very little change since the early 1990s. Good governance and national and EU procurement rules require that my Department does not continue this practice of simply rolling over contracts for employment services. For this reason, in order to ensure service continuity and enhance the provision of employment services, my Department is undertaking a two-phase procurement of employment services on a multi-annual basis.

As a first step, a tender has already been issued to procure services across seven counties in the north west and midlands that are currently without a local employment scheme. This request for tender was published on 26 May 2021 with a deadline of 7 July. Rather than replacing existing contracts, the tender will see the services expand into new areas and therefore provides a good basis on which to apply the new procurement approach. The tender is specifically designed to attract providers with strong local and community links to deliver high-quality employment advice services to people who are long-term unemployed.

As part of this approach, we intend to move away from single annual contracts that involve the financial micromanagement of the local employment service providers. Up to now, local employment services were paid a fixed annual fee, regardless of the number of clients they saw or the outcomes they achieved, and were subject to audit against expenses incurred. This was inefficient and did not place the client, the unemployed jobseeker, at the centre of the contractual relationship. Under the new model, the Department will guarantee a minimum number of clients and make payments based primarily on the number of clients referred, with additional payments for outcomes achieved.

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