Written answers

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation

Employment Support Services

5:00 pm

Photo of Dominic HanniganDominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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Question 100: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the consideration he has given to the possibility of an internship programme for persons who are not on social welfare but are working part-time to gain work experience; the talks he has had with employers groups regarding such a scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4484/12]

Photo of Richard BrutonRichard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Government launched a new national internship scheme, JobBridge, on 1st July last year. JobBridge provides work experience for new entrants to the labour market after training or education, and to unemployed workers seeking to learn new skills.

The scheme provides for up to 5,000 work experience placements in the private, public and voluntary sectors. Participants must be signing on the Live Register for at least three months in order to apply. The scheme comes under the remit of the Minister for Social Protection, Ms. Joan Burton TD, and is overseen by a Steering Group which monitors the scheme on an on-going basis to ensure that it offers quality work experience to participants.

Over 3,500 interns had started their internships with host organisations up to 19th January and a further 630 participants transferred to JobBridge from the Work Placement Programme. A further 1,704 internship opportunities were available on the JobBridge website last week.

JobBridge has become firmly established as a popular internship scheme in the space of just six months and has attracted very strong interest from employers throughout the country. While the current scheme is only open to those who are on the Live Register for three months or more, it is always open to companies to offer internships outside the parameters of JobBridge to those do not satisfy the qualifying criteria for the scheme. In this context, and given the high rate of uptake to date on JobBridge, I see no value in establishing an alternative internship scheme supported by the Government.

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