Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know that the Acting Chairperson and the Minister of State, who hails from the same county as me, will have an interest in this matter. In recent times, this issue has been raised in the Seanad but it is important that we continue to fight the case on behalf of the particular group of people involved.

I will read from a letter that I received recently. I will not mention any names or the part of the country involved, but it is a town in rural Ireland. The letter is from somebody who is involved in a jobs club and it states:

As a staff member currently working a certain centre I have had no direct communication from department officials to inform me of what my future holds. They repeatedly insist that extensive engagement has been held, but I can categorically state that contracted, on the ground staff membershave not been engaged with at all. While meetings have been held with independent job clubs, the letters have been sent to service providers for RFT 2, but we have been forgotten about.

At this moment, we don’t know whether we should be job-seeking or holding on ourselves for redundancy; a redundancy that we will probably have to jump through hoops for. The undue stress this is causing my colleagues and I is unacceptable and unbelievably unprofessional. We have worked alongside and collaboratively with staff in our local Department of Social Protection for over 20 years.

When the Indecon reviews were completed, our understanding was that the new service would appear more like the existing LES services, with adaptions to incorporate the Job Club service. Indeed, the Department have stated that the new Regional Employment Service is to “consolidate existing LES and Job Clubs service and to extend it nationwide”, but the opposite seems to be happening. Disappointingly the tender appeared very similar to the JobPath service already in existence. Why was the service model changed? I can say that having read the tender, absolutely no part of the Job Club service has been incorporated in this new service. The Department of Social Protection repeatedly mention that there is no LES service in the regions in Lot 1, and while that is true, it completely discounts the work the Job Club in those regions have completed over the past 2 decades.

Over 20 years, jobs clubs have played a significant role. The letter continues:

It’s like we don’t exist! There is also the matter of the “tweak” and “learnings” that is undergoing in the tender for RFT2. What are these tweaks/learnings and how can it be fair that providers in Lot 1 had to tender for something potentially different?

While we are of course worried, stressed and concerned about our own jobs, we are also greatly concerned about the future for unemployed people locally and wondering where these people are going to avail of such a service going forward. Having heard first hand from a vast amount of clients throughout the past few years, the JobPath model does not work. It is not popular. It is certainly not cost-effective. It has a large turnover of staff. The CVs produced are questionable, often adopting the copy and paste option from job descriptions found online, with no personalization. The jobs sent out from case workers to individuals, at times, have no connection to the persons past employment experience. It is not person centered and it is not open to anyone who needs assistance.

This is the wrap around service that is so vital, that will not be available for job seekers in the future. The walk in and wrap around service we provide is extremely valuable and the new tendered service, as per JobPath does not make allowances for the people who need this.

The case has been very well made by the person who wrote the letter. That person is very worried not just about their job future but about the people who are badly in need of this service. We must realise that there are people out there who need support and help. The people who work in jobs clubs do very good work. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's reply.