Written answers

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

Department of Social Protection

National Internship Scheme Administration

Photo of Aengus Ó SnodaighAengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

42. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her views on the criticisms in the IMPACT report, JobBridge - Time to Start Again?, and her plans to deal with its recommendations. [17317/15]

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Department welcomes the report and its contribution to the wider debate around labour market and activation policy in a changing economic environment. I am also happy that the report, while making a number of recommendations for change, acknowledges that JobBridge “has been of benefit to many”.

As the report acknowledges, the scheme was introduced in 2011 when the country was in the middle of the worst recession in living memory: a Live Register of nearly 460,000 and trending towards 500,000; unacceptably high levels of emigration; and negative economic growth.

In this context the purpose of JobBridge was twofold – to help jobseekers break the vicious cycle where they cannot get a job without experience but they cannot get experience without a job, and to encourage and support employers to take on staff from the live register in a situation where access to working capital was very constrained.

Since its launch JobBridge has provided over 38,500 unemployed people with the opportunity to gain valuable work experience and over 16,000 host organisations – mainly SMEs to expand capacity. It is not surprising therefore that Dr Murphy's report acknowledges that “the programme has been of benefit to many” and that the largest independent evaluation of the scheme (by Indecon) indicated that 6 out of 10 participants progressed into employment.

The Impact report, which is based on a small number of interviews with interested parties together with a review of relevant literature, makes a number of recommendations with regard to the future development of State supported internships. Many of these recommendations are already incorporated into the terms of the existing scheme (e.g. relating to written agreements, duration of internships, non-compulsion, monitoring). Other recommendations relate to the introduction of different versions of state-supported internships to cater for different types of Jobseekers, payment rates for internships, social insurance status of interns and evaluation/value for money assessment of the scheme.

With regard to this latter recommendation the Department will during 2015 commission a second independent evaluation of JobBridge using econometric techniques to provide evidence based insights into the effectiveness or otherwise of the scheme. The other observations and recommendations of the Impact report will be considered in the context of the findings of this evaluation.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.