Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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40. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of persons who have had a penalty applied to their social protection payments for refusing to take part in the JobPath scheme, by county; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8213/16]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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41. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of complaints she has received from providers regarding participants whom they deemed to be not engaging under the JobPath scheme; the number of these participants who had penalties applied to their social protection payments; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8214/16]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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42. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of reviews she has carried out into the operation of the JobPath scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8215/16]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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43. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of participants under the JobPath scheme; the number who have secured full-time and part-time employment because of their participation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8216/16]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 40 to 43, inclusive, together.

JobPath is a new approach to employment activation to support long-term unemployed people and those most at risk of becoming long-term unemployed to secure and sustain paid employment.

Jobseekers, who are selected for JobPath, are invited to attend an initial information session at which the jobseekers’ rights and responsibilities are explained. Participants on JobPath receive intensive individual support to help them address barriers to employment and to find jobs. Each person is assigned a personal advisor who assesses their skills, experience, challenges and work goals and agrees a “personal progression plan” that includes a schedule of activities, actions and job focused targets. Participants are provided with a range of development supports and may also be referred for further education and training opportunities. They will spend a year on JobPath and if placed into a job they will continue to receive support for at least three months and up to twelve months while in employment.

If a client fails to take part or engage in JobPath, the companies will make several attempts to engage with that client. They will notify the Department only after these attempts have failed. Failure to engage may be due to the client’s contact information being out of date or the client has chosen not to respond. In such cases the Department will meet the client, remind them of the conditions of their jobseeker payment and make arrangements for them to take part in JobPath. The Department does not collate details of these local meetings.However, the Department’s records show that there are 92 jobseekers whose jobseeker payment is currently reduced for failure to comply with JobPath. These are broken down by county as follows:

The Department meets with the JobPath companies on a regular basis to review the operation of the service and has recently commenced a programme of on-site inspections. The roll-out of JobPath is not yet completed. It is expected to be finalised over the summer months. To date some 25,000 jobseekers have been referred to JobPath. Given that clients will spend 52 weeks on JobPath it is necessary to allow sufficient time to elapse before a meaningful assessment can be carried out. At the present time it is too early to undertake an evaluation of job placement performance. As indicated in “Pathways to Work 2016 – 2020” the Department intends to publish JobPath performance statistics from Q3 2016.