Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Kerrane for bringing this very timely motion and allowing us to speak on it tonight. I will be supporting this motion. I honestly feel the services we have are good enough. While perhaps at times they could have been better, I am very worried that what we will get will be worse. When something is for profit, I am afraid the people who will suffer are those who are on the margins and seeking employment in trying to get going. We know how people are fixed after the virus and the lockdowns. Many people who had not recovered from the breakdown of the economy in 2008 and 2009 still need assistance.

I put it to the Minister that if something is working well enough, why do we not leave it alone? I give as an example Turas Nua, a company that was employed to deal with people in trying to get them back to work. In reality it was about getting people off the dole, regardless. It made it impossible for them. I know of one young man who was about 30 miles from Tralee out on the side of a hill at Knocknagashel. He had to thumb every Monday morning from his house, along the side of the main and dangerous road where many people have been killed, and go into Tralee to present himself, prove what he had been doing and who he had asked for employment. This went on for more than 12 months. Many people would not understand the torture this poor young fellow went through, only if they stood where he left to go into Tralee every Monday morning.

I believe the Government should now abandon the plans to privatise local employment services. Staff currently employed in these centres are understandably extremely very about the possibility of losing their jobs. It will also see an end to people walking in without a referral. Many people do not have a referral and that is how some of the services worked.

The Minister has said it is open to local employment services and job clubs to tender for the new model. The majority, however, will be priced out of this tendering service. We have seen in the past where privatisation of job activity services like the disastrous JobBridgescheme has failed. That particular scheme has cost close to €300,000 since 2015.

The local employment service is and was a vital service in communities throughout the country and is a far more holistic service than the standard profit-driven employment service.

See this speech in context