Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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12. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will change the recently launched First Steps scheme, specifically in relation to penalties, which will be applied to the social welfare payments of those who refuse to participate, in view of the National Youth Council of Ireland's report (details supplied). [9374/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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First Steps is not a new JobBridge - it is a developmental internship scheme for young, disadvantaged jobseekers, for example, very early school leavers or young people with a prior history of addiction problems. The objective of First Stepsis to encourage employers to open their doors to such young people; to give them the opportunity to learn and develop basic work and social skills while on a placement in a real work situation.

Towards this end employers are being asked to sponsor one or more disadvantaged young people on an internship of 6 – 9 months duration. These internships will not be advertised by employers; instead participants will be identified by the Department and will be placed with a sponsoring organisation. In this regard, First Steps is closer in design to TÚS than it is to JobBridge.

The Department, in identifying and assessing potential participants, will take care to ensure that they are suited to the placements available and take due regard of any reasons that may be put forward by the young person as to why the placement is not appropriate in their circumstances. However, the Department will, as is the case in TÚS and other programmes, reserve the right to apply a penalty rate of payment if a jobseeker once selected fails, without good cause, to participate in the programme.

To date, over 37,700 jobseekers have voluntarily availed of internship opportunities provided by JobBridge. It has proven itself to be an effective pathway to paid employment – with a large scale independent evaluation showing that over 60% of interns progress to paid employment within five months of completing their internship. A key feature of JobBridge is that internships are voluntarily offered by employers who then interview and select applicants who voluntarily apply directly to them. Other than specifying the eligibility criteria the Department has no role in the identification or selection of participating jobseekers.