Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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128. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his views on the European Commission’s Country Report Ireland (details supplied) and the finding that it is difficult to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of upskilling programmes such as JobBridge, Springboard and Momentum, due to the lack of formal, rigorous evaluation; the detail of all evaluation programmes currently in place; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11029/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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In 2015 My Department initiated a rolling, multi-annual evaluations programme, using econometric and qualitative methods, of Pathways to Work programme and process reforms. This includes large-scale annual customer satisfaction surveys. It draws upon an episodic administrative database, the Jobseekers’ Longitudinal Database (JLD), capturing jobseekers spells of unemployment and exits to employment, training and education, from 2004.

The two major evaluations currently under way using the JLD are the evaluation of the Intreo ‘one-stop-shop’ service for jobseekers, and of the Back to Work Enterprise Allowance (BTWEA).

As part of this evaluation programme, the JobBridge evaluation report was published in October 2016. It had 3 elements: a rigorous counterfactual impact evaluation (that used cohort-building techniques to continuously assess impacts); a survey (response rate: 33.5% of all participants and 23.3% of all host organisations); and a cost-benefit analysis. Key findings included:

- Individuals similar to those who participated in JobBridge had a 36.6% probability of securing employment within one year, whereas the JobBridge interns’ probability of securing employment within one year increased to 48.4% (an 11.8 percentage point difference and a 32% increase in the probability of becoming employed).

- The overall economic cost-benefit analysis, taking account of increased employment and incomes, indicates a positive economic net benefit.

- Among interns, there was broad agreement that the internship provided them with new job skills and an opportunity to gain quality work experience. However, there was dissatisfaction with the value of the top-up payment and some aspects of the administration of the scheme.

Following publication of the evaluation in October 2016, the Minister announced his intention to replace JobBridge in 2017 with a new work experience programme that better reflected the improved labour market and addressed certain criticisms of the scheme. The design of the scheme will be informed by learning from the evaluation, by proposed design principles as recommended by the Labour Market Council, and by consultation with stakeholders.

In relation to Springboard and Momentum, which are operated under the aegis of the Department of Education and Skills there have been formal evaluations undertaken of both programmes in recent years. The latest statistics for Springboard show that 80% of participants between 2011 and 2015 are no longer on the Live Register.

The above information was supplied to the European Commission during the drafting of the Country Report.