Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In 2014, I told the then Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, that her JobPath scheme was the stuff of nightmares for the unemployed. After €300 million has been spent to achieve a success rate of just 6%, I have been proven correct. I also said the same about her other madcap scheme, JobBridge. I was also right when I highlighted at the time the concerns among the local employment services and jobs clubs that they could face extinction as the type of privatisation that underlay JobPath would likely expand into their services and now here we are. Where will it end? What is next? Is it the disability services? I will say it again; this scheme is the stuff of nightmares for the unemployed. The latest tender is aimed at dismantling community-based not-for-profit services and doing away with the wealth of knowledge and expertise they have built up in working with local unemployed people, addressing their issues, lending them support and often going beyond the call of duty to help those whom private contractors look upon as cash cows rather than people in need of supports to re-engage with employment. A for-profit ethos should have no role in community services but this Government and all governments since the days of the Progressive Democrats have had blind faith in the market to deliver for struggling communities. It does not do that and everybody in this House should know that.

See this speech in context