Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 22: To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will make a statement providing details on the group engagement sessions, group engagement seminars and group information seminars mentioned in Pathways to Work. [11881/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The group engagement initiative, referred to in 'Pathways to Work', is a relatively new approach by my Department when working with jobseeking clients. Under this process, jobseekers who have been on the live register for at least three months are referred in groups to a single location. Staff from my Department offer them a presentation that provides relevant information and advice on their entitlements, rights and responsibilities. Appointments are then made for follow-up one-to-one meetings with an employment services expert. The group engagement initiative was first tested by my Department, in conjunction with FÁS, in October 2010 in three locations initially [Galway, Dublin North and Dublin South]. This was part of the suite of measures aimed at strengthening the labour market activation process under the National Employment Action Plan. Following an evaluation of the group engagement process in mid-2011, the initiative has now been extended to 38 of the Department's local offices. Over 13,000 people have been referred through the process to date. The Department's research has shown very positive feedback from clients with significant increases in the attendance rates at the follow-up, individual one-to-one interviews with the employment services experts.

The group engagement initiative forms part of the suite of improvement measures to the way in which people will be offered more informed and personalised support services with the prioritization of more intensive and targeted support for those on the live register who are identified as being most at risk of long-term unemployment under the new profiling arrangements.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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Question 24: To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will develop a pay by results job matching model into the future; the studies that have been done on the model; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11734/12]

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 50: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the way she intends to deliver the deeper and more regular engagement with NEES promised in Pathways to Work with less staff and less resources. [11882/12]

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Question 52: To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will reconsider her plans to privatise social welfare services announced in Pathways to Work; and if her attention has been drawn to the fact that before she took the decision to go down this route that in January 2012 the British National Audit Office stated that the British Department for Work and Pensions had grossly overestimated the number of jobseekers that the payment-by-results model would get back to work. [11886/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 24, 50 and 52 together.

The Department is establishing a new National Employment and Entitlements Service (NEES), as provided for in the Programme for Government, which integrates employment and benefit payment services within the Department. The Pathways to Work strategy which was launched by the Government on 23rd February incorporates the provision to establish the NEES and commits to a new approach to the provision of services for unemployed people. The objective is to reduce the level of long term unemployment and to ensure those who are unemployed will be provided with appropriate advice, support, education and training to take advantage of new job opportunities as the economy recovers. The Pathways to Work has five strands:

· more regular and on-going engagement with people who are unemployed

· greater targeting of activation places and opportunities

· incentivising the take-up of opportunities

· incentivising employers to provide more jobs for people who are unemployed, and

· reforming institutions to deliver better services to people who are unemployed.

In considering the resource requirements required to implement the programme set out in Pathways to Work and in establishing the NEES, it is expected that the integration of staff from FÁS, the Community Welfare Service and the Department will realise efficiencies. This integration will free up resources and staff for the more resource intense role of case management and activation. There will be staff savings at local level where customers will now be dealing with one agency rather than interacting with three different agencies in three different locations. There will also be synergies in the alignment and rationalisation of corporate service such as HR, Finance, and IT Payments.

The Department expects to realise further efficiency gains from the continued upgrading and development of IT support systems and the automation of routine resource intensive operations. This will release staff who are currently involved in manual routine work to resource the case management service.

The NEES project plan also allows for the outsourcing of some of the case management and activation services to complement the Department's own resources in referral and job placement. Work on the possible involvement of private and third sector providers is ongoing within the Department. Over the course of the last three months meetings have been held with a number of stakeholders including representatives from the Department of Work and Pensions, representatives from international employment service providers and representatives of Irish recruitment companies. A specific proposal on how to integrate private sector provision into the services the Department currently provides has not yet been worked out.

Three advantages of such a model are:

· Firstly it gives access to the expertise and knowledge of the private sector – people who have a better 'on the ground'' knowledge of workforce requirements than the public sector could be expected to have.

· Secondly it allows us to 'flex' our resources by bringing in extra private sector resources as required to match peaks and troughs in demand.

· Thirdly, the payment by results approach minimises the call on scarce exchequer cash resources.

It is to be noted however that the use of external resources is nothing new – the Department, previously FÁS, engages c 23 Local Employment Service (LES) providers to provide employment services including job coaching, mentoring, and job search assistance to the people who are long term unemployed and funds these activities to the value of c €20 million p.a. There is currently c 300 staff engaged by LES companies in the provision of these employment services. The Department also has similar external contract arrangements in place to cater for the requirements of clients with disabilities who wish to return to the workforce.

In addition, the Department has a history of contracting with external contractors for the provision of services – namely An Post for the provision of payment services and contracted Branch Managers for the provision of customer facing services in approximately 60 locations.

I would like to stress that the Pathways to Work policy is not a policy working in isolation from other actions. The Government launched its Action Plan for Jobs with a view to creating a net additional 100,000 jobs over the next five years. Pathways to Work are a complementary policy designed to support people currently on the live register to access those jobs.