John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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299. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if his attention has been drawn to the fact that JobPath participants cannot access community employment programmes while registered on a JobPath programme and the difficulties the JobPath initiative is having with referrals to community employment programmes for recruitment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5475/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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My Department provides a range of activation supports for unemployed jobseekers. These supports include the JobPath service and employment programmes such as the Community Employment (CE) schemes for long term unemployed and Intreo activation support for the short term unemployed.

The JobPath service is provided for jobseekers only, whereas CE provides part time temporary work in communities for people in receipt of a range of social welfare payments including jobseekers.

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. During the year 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.

CE schemes are a stepping stone back to employment but are not full time sustainable jobs.

Jobseekers can only participate with one activation scheme or service at a time; this is to ensure that the best use is made of the available places and to allow the scheme and service providers’ time to work with the participants. However, in a small number of exceptional cases, which are assessed on a case by case basis, my Department will facilitate a person to move from one activation support to another.

There are approximately 200,000 jobseekers who require activation support, there are 120,000 places available, currently 60,000 on JobPath and the remainder on CE, Tús, Back to Work or Back to Education Schemes. It is only in recent months that the first jobseekers referred to JobPath have completed their year long engagement with the service. The numbers referred initially were low but this will increase over the next few months and those who have not found suitable and sustainable employment will have opportunities, subject to an assessment by an Intreo case officer to apply for other activation supports such as CE, thus ensuring ongoing availability to all schemes.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.