Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 199: To ask the Minister for Social Protection if any evaluation was carried out of the piloted part-time job opportunity programme between 1994 and 1998; the finding of same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38919/11]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I am aware of the proposal advanced by Social Justice Ireland (SJI) that seeks to create 100,000 part-time working positions in the public, community and voluntary sectors. The proposal is based on a similar approach piloted between 1994 and 1998 where the participant is required to work the number of hours required to earn the equivalent of their social welfare payment and a small top-up. SJI propose that access would be on a voluntary basis and participants would be paid through the reallocation of social welfare payments to the employing organisations. Additionally, participants would be allowed to take up other paid employment in their spare time without incurring loss of benefits and would be subject to normal income tax and payroll deductions in the normal way if their total income brought them into the tax net.

The previous scheme was administered by CORI and operated for three years from June 1994. My understanding is that an evaluation was conducted by then Department of Enterprise and Employment which identified a number of innovations which were subsequently mainstreamed with a restructuring of community employment, the introduction of spousal swaps and the development of Jobs Initiative which was modelled on a 39 hour working week with the participant receiving the equivalence of their former social welfare rate of payment. The Jobs Initiative was subsequently closed to new applications in 2004 and currently supports over 1,300 people in employment.

Given the range of interventions my Department currently funds and operates, I would need to be convinced that the approach advanced by SJI could not be accommodated within the range of existing schemes that my Department currently funds and operates. I have already indicated that I wish to look at the effectiveness of the existing range of initiatives and schemes to see if better output can be achieved. At present, community employment has capacity to engage 23,300 participants; the rural social scheme supports 2,700; Tús – the community work placement initiative - has 2,000 on payroll and will have 5,000 participants in place in 2012. JobBridge currently has placed over 3,000 people in internships with a target of 5,000.