Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is the case that JobBridge scheme, participants were involved in the work on this Bill a few years ago and they did great work. The scheme was very successful and I understand that all of the participants went on to secure full-time jobs. I do not share Senator Paul Gavan's views on JobBridge and believe the scheme was quite successful in many cases. While I would accept that the scheme was abused in some cases, I would argue that in general it was effective, with over 60% of participants securing full-time work on completion of the scheme. In that sense, it was time well spent for the participants. If I had a choice between sitting at home or taking part in the JobBridge scheme, I would be happy to choose the latter. I accept that there was not a lot of extra money for the participants but they got great work experience and in some cases the scheme led to excellent careers. I am a firm believer in people getting experience and on-the-job training and we need to see more of that. I hope that we will see a revised version of JobBridge in the future. I am not denying that there were flaws in the scheme. It was introduced with great speed in 2011 during the emergency but it was useful in some cases. In the case of the work on this Bill, JobBridge participants were involved but not in the last year. All of those involved went on to secure full-time work.

I thank all of the Members for their contributions to this debate and look forward to further deliberations on Committee Stage next week.