Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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305. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the progression figures by region of community employment, Tús and JobPath, in 2016; the budgets allocated for each of these schemes in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39632/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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JobPath is a relatively new approach whereby the Department has procured additional resources, under contract, to enable it to provide a high quality case-managed employment support service to people who are long-term unemployed. JobPath supplements the internal case management capacity of the Department’s Intreo service and the Local Employment Service. Over the past year, this additional capacity has enabled the Department to provide an intensive employment support and advisory service to over 60,000 long-term unemployed jobseekers who would otherwise not have received such a service. JobPath aims to place people into full-time sustainable employment. The period of engagement with the service for any individual is typically 52 weeks. During that time they receive intensive individual support to help them to overcome barriers to employment and, if a person is placed into a job, they will continue to receive support for at least three months and up to an additional twelve months while in employment. The JobPath service was rolled out on a phased basis from mid-2015. Data in respect of the first groups who have completed their engagement period is currently being compiled and is expected to be available shortly.

Community Employment (CE) and Tús are both employment programmes funded by my Department. Their main purpose is to help long-term unemployed people to re-enter the active workforce by breaking their experience of unemployment through a return to work routine. The budgets for 2016 for CE and Tús are €376.5m and €121.08m respectively.

The progression rate into employment (based on total exits from CE) was 34.6% in November 2016, while overall progression (including entry to further education) was 40.3% (see table 1). This is in the context of 8,619 participants exiting CE in the year up to November 2016.

Table 1: Progression from CE by Division - November 2016

Source: CSM Extracts November 2016

The progression rate for Tús for 2016 will not be available until early in 2017.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.