Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The focus of the employment services provided through Intreo is on supporting and assisting people who are returning to work in whatever shape happens to be appropriate for them. Intreo services are already open to jobseekers - since our conversation last night, I have checked this - regardless of their status. Many of the people we help are not on the live register.

Local employment services provided by one of the contracted service providers have a similar focus on people who are not in receipt of a jobseeker's payment, including qualified adult dependants, who avail of these services on a voluntary basis. However, it is acknowledged that many people have educational or training requirements that need to be met before they can successfully compete in the labour market. In such cases, the staff of Intreo or local employment services will work with the individuals to identify and address those needs as part of the process of agreeing each individual personal progression plan and nominate the person for training within the education and training boards, ETBs, or other training providers, whichever is the person's wish.

A range of activation programmes, particularly in the area of education and training, are available to any jobseeker irrespective of his or her live register status. In line with long-established policy, participants on these programmes receive allowances in line with their previous welfare payments. This means that persons who are not in receipt of welfare payments do not receive allowances, but we will engage reactively with them when they approach us for assistance.

The funding model for wages on temporary employment programmes such as community employment and Tús is based specifically on the generation of savings as a result of participants moving off prior schemes and onto these schemes. It is not feasible to alter this funding model for people who are not in receipt of social welfare payments.

I will point the Senator towards two proactive measures. To date, our Intreo services, local employment services and jobs clubs have worked reactively when people who are not on the live register approach them looking for assistance. However, we are undertaking two projects this year. We launched the Action Plan for Jobless Households and the Ability programme for people with disabilities. Under these, our people will proactively seek out people who are in jobless households and not in receipt of social welfare payments within their own right. Most of these are the qualified adults in question who receive payments through their spouses. They will be targeted in an attempt to get them to engage with our training, education and work experience programmes.

The Ability programme is designed to address these issues for people who have intellectual or physical disabilities. We are working with NGOs and service providers to roll out a programme of specific actions and plans to make people who have disabilities job ready so that they can move to other social welfare payments, for example, the partial capacity payment, or part-time work, which is what we want them to do. The purpose of our activation programmes is to get people unemployed or underemployed into full-time employment.

I am not going to accept the amendment because there is no reason to do so, given that what the Senator is looking for is already the practice in our local offices.