Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many of the problems have been identified by my colleagues and are also seen in the area of Dublin South Central which the Minister knows well. I refer to the problems of inadequate training, the threats of the loss of jobseeker payment, lack of real opportunities and the waste of public money going to private companies.

I want to raise a point in regard to small and medium-sized businesses. I know that many small business owners are being inundated with CVs from JobPath centres with some reaching unmanageable levels of 200 a day. They state that not only is this method of job searching wholly inadequate for finding suitable candidates but it puts undue administrative stress on ordinary small businesses who end up at a loss to find the right candidate for the post. It is a tsunami of CVs sent out so another box is ticked. It also means that capable and suitable candidates for the posts will be lost in the pile of unsuitable CVs and applications. This is extremely frustrating for all involved, except for the profit-making Turas Nua and Seetec of course.

My consistent message is that we need to foster and empower our communities. The privatisation of assisting jobseekers has gutted the community of this task and I can see that we have lost the spirit of looking out for one another. Those involved in job activation schemes like the community employment and the local employment services have described JobPath as the greatest threat to their stability. They cannot fill places as they do not have the people to do so. The Minister insists that neither scheme is suffering but that is blatantly misleading I believe.

Senator Butler dismissed the method of research with the use of Facebook and Twitter. However, I need to let the Senator know that was precluded by face to face interviews with stakeholders including employees and personal advisers who had left Turas Nua. There is an attempt to skew the figures with 5% to 8% dissatisfaction reported with JobPath. That is very low. I find that really surprising. There are reasons if one peels back those layers. Most people do not know how to make a complaint. It is made deliberately difficult and the information is kept from people and they are not clear on how to complain. They do not know the process or procedure. If they did know the process and procedure which we are trying to expose and if people were comprehensively informed I imagine that the figures would skyrocket as we found in our face to face interviews with people. This is a bad policy. I had hoped that this House would support our position this evening but that is doubtful given the two amendments by the Government and their buddies in Fianna Fáil.