Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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2. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the companies which were banned from participating in JobBridge, and are now being permitted to take persons on, so that the persons who made formal complaints and were assured that their former employers were being excluded from the scheme have access to this information. [8365/16]

Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour)
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JobBridge was introduced in July 2011 as a rapid response to the sharp increase in unemployment resulting from the unprecedented collapse in the economy. Since then over 18,500 Host Organisations have provided internship opportunities to over 46,500 unemployed jobseekers. Independent research indicates that circa 60% of jobseekers who participated in JobBridge progressed into paid employment within a short period (5 months) of completing the internship.

The Department makes every effort to ensure that the positive impact of JobBridge is not diminished by any exploitation of the scheme. There are a number of measures to minimise this risk and to respond to breaches of scheme conditionality.

Potential Host Organisations must meet strict terms and conditions in order to participate in the scheme. All applications are screened on receipt and those that fail to meet the requirements are rejected.

A Standard Agreement outlining the key duties and hours of the internship placement along with the associated skills, knowledge and learning development to be acquired by the intern forms the kernel of the whole internship placement. This must be agreed and signed by both the Host Organisation and intern at the outset of the internship, and should be available for inspection by Department staff. Monthly compliance reports/checks must be completed by the Host Organisation and submitted to the Department.

To ensure that Host Organisations are abiding by the terms the scheme, the Department has a very robust monitoring regime. This involves the regular review of monthly compliance reports and random monitoring visits to facilitate discussions with both parties to the internship. Over 12,500 monitoring visits have been conducted and 98% of these have been satisfactory. In addition, the Department takes all complaints by interns extremely seriously and fully investigates them. Remedial action is always taken in cases of non-compliance.

Investigations by Department staff found that the overwhelming majority of internships offered under JobBridge comply with the terms and conditions of the scheme. In a small number of cases (86) the Department was of the view that non-compliance by certain organisations warranted a decision to debar them from further participation in the scheme, or to suspend them participation for varying durations depending on the nature of the transgression. This represents less than 0.5% of Host Organisations participating in the scheme.

As the scheme is voluntary (there is no obligation on a jobseeker to take up or remain in an Internship and there is no penalty for leaving an internship) and as the host organisations received no remuneration for their participation in the scheme the decisions were taken on an administrative basis by individual inspectors and the Host Organisations concerned had no recourse to challenge the decision or to seek a review by a central authority. In such circumstances as the decisions to bar host organisations related to failure to comply with administrative rather than legal requirements and given that publication of a finding of non-compliance could have wider adverse consequences for a host organisation it was not intended that the names of the host organisations concerned would be published.

A ruling from the Information Commissioner issued on 2nd of October 2015 (Ref. 150104) upheld the Department’s decision not to disclose the names of the organisations concerned. The Commissioner, inter alia, accepted the Department’s position that as the decisions were taken on an administrative basis without recourse to notice or review or notice, and that as publication could result in adverse consequences for the organisations concerned (who did not have an opportunity to challenge the decision) it would be it would be improper to release the names.

The Department has, however, since implemented revised procedures to place decisions to disbar host organisation on a more formal footing. Key changes are that decisions are now made by a Compliance Officer in the central JobBridge Unit, rather than by individual inspectors in the field and communicated to all of the parties concerned. This will ensure greater consistency and transparency in the decision-making process and will facilitate publication of host organisations names in cases where host organisations are barred from use of the scheme.