Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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12. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she is concerned at the failure of 40% of those who take an internship through JobBridge to secure full-time employment on completing that internship; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [17733/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The aim of JobBridge is to help individuals break the vicious cycle whereby they can’t get a job without experience but they can’t get experience without a job. An evaluation conducted by Indecon Economic Consultants found that 61% of interns who finish placements secure employment within five months. These progression outcomes compare very favourably to those elsewhere in Europe which tend to be at around 30%.

Accordingly I am very satisfied with the performance of JobBridge. As at 10th April, 2014, 27,781 internship placements had commenced with over 6,600 participants in active internships and 2,482 internship posts advertised and available on the JobBridge website. The total cost to the Exchequer of the top-up allowances paid to-date is €29.3 million.

I believe that this performance is due, at least in part, to the voluntary nature of the relationship between the host organisation and the intern. A key feature of the scheme is that interns select and apply for internships which they themselves identify from the internships offered by employers. In this way the internship is designed to be as close as possible to a real employment situation. In addition host organisations must provide meaningful work experience to interns, commit to a standard agreement detailing expected learning outcomes for the intern, provide mentoring to each intern, submit monthly reports to the Department and, at the end of the internship, complete an evaluation questionnaire and provide each intern with a reference. All of these factors taken together contribute to the high rates of progression of interns into employment.

Even in those instances where interns are unable to move directly into employment from a JobBridge internship, the independent evaluation found that interns gain valuable skills and real-workplace experience through JobBridge and that participants themselves found that the scheme boosted their self-confidence and helped to establish useful labour market contacts and networks. It is therefore a scheme which I am proud to have introduced and one which I would commend to all jobseekers and employers.

As a further incentive to employers to take on people who are long-term unemployed I have recently launched JobsPlus. Approved employers may qualify for up €10,000 cashback for recruiting a person who has been long-term unemployed. This cashback is paid in the form of monthly payments of €447 per month for each month the jobseeker is in employment for up to 24 months. This is a significant incentive to recruit people who are long term unemployed and I am pleased to report that it is being positively supported by employers with about 2,000 jobseekers, 60% of whom were more than 2 years unemployed, benefitting from the scheme.