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

With the Acting Chairman's indulgence, there is another amendment coming much later, amendment No. 39, again in the name of the Senator.A personal progression plan is an administrative document. It is for the individual and the case officer, be they an Intreo, community employment, Tús, rural social scheme supervisor or Turas Nua case officer. This document sets out a plan between the two individuals involved to help the jobseeker get a job.

The plan contains the customer’s contact information; contact details for the personal adviser; the details of the customer’s skills, competencies and aptitudes; the fields of work the jobseeker deems appropriate; the barriers to employment he or she is facing and agreed actions between the jobseeker and the case officer to overcome those barriers; the customer’s job, employment or training goals; an agreed set of skills, training, education and development goals and actions; and an agreed set of potential employment related experience interventions. The most important word in all of this is “agreement”. The case officer cannot decide what is best for the person without the person’s input.

It is purely an administrative document to provide a plan to work forward a year in Tús, three years in community employment, a year with JobPath and, hopefully, less than a year with an Intreo case officer. It is only an administrative document but the most important element of it is that it must be an agreed document. Otherwise, it does not work.