Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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225. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide the principles of the service proposed and advertised in the newspaper under the heading provision, maintenance, support and operation of a new online public employment jobs-matching/vacancy service; if the service in mind is more appropriately adaptable to existing recruitment agencies and start-up companies specialising in online recruitment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20553/15]

Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Department of Social Protection has invited tenders for the Provision, Maintenance, Support and Operation of a new online Public Employment Jobs Matching/Vacancy Service to replace the current Jobs Ireland service (www.jobsireland.ie). The Request for Tender (RFT) document was published on the government’s e-tenders website and the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) website.

The Department is engaged in a programme to modernise its services. This modernisation programme is fundamental to the Department’s objectives of delivering a comprehensive service to people and positioning the Department to better adapt to political priorities and changing customer needs.

The Department has established a new Employment and Support Service (Intreo), as provided for in the Programme for Government. The objective of the Intreo service is to integrate the provision of employment services and benefit payment services so as to ensure that the payment of income supports to jobseekers is directly linked to the equally, if not more important, task of supporting them in their pursuit of employment and related opportunities and improving their life chances. The provision of a new online Public Employment Jobs Matching/Vacancy service is central to that effort.

Tenderers are asked to outline their approach to providing a system as a service that meets the requirements set out in the RFT, namely, to provide a solution that will:

- Provide a new on-line Public Employment Vacancy/Jobs Matching Service;

- Deliver an improved online Vacancy advertising and matching service;

- Populate the EURES Public Employment Portal with validated Irish Vacancies;

- Allow DSP staff and Employers to manage DSP Employment Programmes;

- Automatically validate Vacancies where possible;

- Aggregate Vacancies from other selected websites for display on the JobsIreland website;

- Allow unregistered Jobfinders to search for vacancies;

- Allow Jobfinders to create an account;

- Allow registered Jobfinders to manage multiple CVs from their profiles;

- Automatically match Jobfinders to Vacancies and vice-versa;

- Allow Employers to search registered Jobfinder profiles;

- Allow Jobfinders to apply for Vacancies via the system;

- Allow DSP to create a link between a Jobseeker and their registered (JobsIreland) Jobfinder account;

- Allow DSP to search Jobfinder accounts in JobsIreland where the Jobfinder is a Jobseeker;

- Provide a EURES Ireland feature with relevant links to EURES service;

- Permit DSP staff to monitor a Jobseeker’s activity via the Department’s Activation Case Management system;

- Support the Department by eliminating paper based business processes and reducing telephone queries.

The solution proposed should also enable employers, inter alia, to:

- Register to use the service;

- Create Vacancies, including the specification of key role requirements and competencies in a manner that can be easily matched with Jobfinders Jobseeker profiles;

- Display salaried Vacancies on the EURES website;

- Be notified of Jobfinders who are matched to a Vacancy by the JobsIreland system and view the details of their profiles;

- Communicate with Jobfinders or DSP staff/Administrators; amd

- Invite, receive, view and download detailed applications for Vacancies from Jobfinders