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

I welcome the opportunity to address the House. I fully recognise the hard work, professionalism and commitment of all those working on the front line in providing employment services and supports to people who are out of work. I know very well the good work that the LES does in my home county of Monaghan. The services throughout the country provide valuable support and assistance to people at a time of need and it is important that should be recognised tonight.

What I cannot escape, however, is the clear legal advice from the Attorney General that these services must be subject to a competitive procurement process. Representatives of the ILDN have written to me to state that it has legal advice to say that there is no legal requirement to tender. The legal advice from the ILDN was not shared with me or my officials. Instead, the organisation provided a high-level synopsis of the legal opinion in a letter to me. This was shared with the Office of the Attorney General and its view is that its original advice still stands: there must be an open procurement process. I must follow the legal advice of the Attorney General, and whether the Government likes it, we have no choice but to put these contracts out to tender. We must all remember that the most important people in this debate are the jobseekers. My first job as the Minister is to ensure that quality services are in place and available to help them. I cannot do that if there is a question mark about the legal status of the contracts or if there is a lack of transparency about how those contracts are awarded.

Of course, any change requiring existing service providers to submit tenders in a situation where they have not had to do so for more than 25 years will be unsettling. I recognise these concerns, and that is why my Department has engaged extensively over an extended period, going back as far as 2018, with representatives of the service providers. We also split the procurement process into two phases. The first phase extends coverage into areas where there is no LES provider at present. In this phase local partnerships were successful in two of the three lots where they submitted bids. This shows clearly that the community sector can bid successfully for these services. I have no doubt that this success will be replicated in the second phase.

Members will be aware that my Department commissioned an external review of LES and job clubs provision. This review, led by Indecon, involved extensive consultation with the service providers and culminated in the production of two reports in 2018. These reports recommended the consolidation of the LES and job clubs into a single service, which is the basis of the new regional employment service model. The Indecon reports also recommended improving the governance of existing services, along with the need for open and competitive procurement for contracted employment services. As a next step, the Department then commissioned the Institute of Employment Studies and the Social Finance Foundation to advise on how best to proceed, taking account of the wider employment services landscape. These are not-for-profit organisations with international expertise in delivering employment and labour market and social change policies, and, again, these bodies consulted with service providers. They recommended a revised regional employment services model consolidating the services currently provided by LES and job clubs and focusing on people who are very distant from the labour market. While the report is confidential, because it contains detailed costs analyses that it would not be prudent to disclose prior to or during a procurement process, a redacted chapter of the report, relating specifically to the RES model, was provided to the members of the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands.

Some Members mentioned the need for further engagement with the sector. There has been extensive engagement, and I will give a brief overview. In 2018, the CEOs of all the local partnership companies were briefed, while, in January 2019, my Department hosted a briefing on Indecon's recommendations. The Institute of Employment Studies also consulted with representatives from the sector and the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, INOU. In 2019, my officials visited every provider to inform them of the process and to garner their views and suggestions. Briefings then took place on the first RFT process and a further briefing session on the approach to phase 2 was held this month, which was exclusively reserved for staff or board members of parties interested in bidding. As part of this session, feedback was sought on views with respect to the design of the first procurement phase. I also instructed my officials to meet with representatives of SIPTU, Fórsa and the ILDN in a forum to discuss their issues, including their feedback on the first RFT. I also met with representatives of the ILDN, and I will again meet with them, and with representatives of all the local partnerships, later this week. Therefore, there has been and continues to be a significant level of engagement in this regard.

The bottom line, however, regardless of this major degree of engagement, is that existing providers would, understandably, prefer if the tender process could just be halted. I have no doubt that every Deputy would also like to have their contracts renewed continuously, regardless of performance, but that is not how the world works.

Stopping the tender process is not an option and everybody in this House concerned about compliance with EU law and proper standards of transparency and governance knows that this is not an option. However, I assure Deputies that suggestions arising from the extensive consultation with the sector have been incorporated into the design of the RES model and feedback from the first phase of procurement is informing the finalisation of the tender design for the second phase. In particular, the design will address issues such as cash flow and minimum referral volumes, and will include a strong emphasis on social value and linkages.

The Sinn Féin motion once again attacks JobPath, a contracted employment service delivered by Seetec and Turas Nua. The two companies involved are community and staff-based enterprises.

One is owned by a farmers' co-operative and the other is majority owned by its staff via a staff trust. Between them the two providers employ over 480 staff all around country.

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