Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minster here this evening. I will be brief. I am not going to rehash what has already been said. It is quite obvious from all sides that there are issues with the JobPath scheme. They have been identified and highlighted. From a personal point of view what I came across first, and which has been mentioned, is that one becomes ineligible for a CE scheme if one happens to be referred to JobPath. That is having a detrimental effect in rural areas and within rural communities, voluntary committees, Tidy Towns, social clubs and sporting clubs. They are unable to recruit and are losing very good recruits they had working for them because of the inadequacy in the scheme where if one is on one scheme one cannot qualify for the other.

I will be seconding the Fianna Fail amendments. While I do agree with much of what is in the Sinn Féin motion, there is a sense though of I will not say knee-jerk reactions but throwing the baby out with the bath water. Just suspending is not good enough for the people who have not been mentioned or have been mentioned very little this evening. We have all highlighted and concentrated on the negative. However, there are a lot of very good positive success stories related to JobPath. There are many people in employment today who possibly would not have been and they would say they had a very good experience with the scheme. I think just suspending because there is a problem is not the answer.

Therefore I will second our amendments which look at the scheme in a more constructive manner and propose tweaks and changes. Our amendments highlight a correct and proper complaints procedure for participants which I think is lacking in the scheme. It has been mentioned by previous speakers. Some people, because they are long-term unemployed and have the needs that the scheme is there to provide, would be afraid that by complaining they would be in danger of losing benefits, of losing status or losing the possibility of the job that they were going to get. It is an important part of our amendments that there would be a correct complaints procedure for the recipients of the scheme.

It is also vitally important that we have a close look and monitor the whole delivery process where it is a payment by results model. Incentive payment is a very good model within the private sector to maximise productivity or output from employees. However, we are referring here to productivity which is dealing with the lives of people. People may get a job that is not suitable to them yet through circumstances they must stay in it. That is psychologically detrimental. We have somebody who is going to get paid because a person takes that job, so questions do have to be asked about the procedures that would be used and the suitability of the client that ends up in the job. It is a model that works very well in productive situations in private enterprise but I would have serious reservations about its use where people's lives and futures are at stake and somebody potentially gets a reward by placing people.

One size does not fit all. The scheme has had its positives but there are major problems. The reason we have tabled our amendment is that a knee-jerk reaction of just suspending now because there are problems would be detrimental for people who are in situ and are still depending on their personal advisers. Our amendments look at the faults in the scheme and also suggest solutions to those problems.