Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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64. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plans to improve awareness of community employment schemes for those on the live register and other eligible schemes; his further plans for a public awareness campaign; and if his attention has been drawn to the difficulties that the JobsIreland website is causing for those applying to community employment schemes. [25839/17]

Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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89. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the way in which he envisages that the referral process of persons to community employment schemes will be carried out, further to the latest report into community employment schemes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25966/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 64 and 89 together.

My Department provides a range of activation supports and programmes catering for long-term unemployed jobseekers and those most distant from the labour market. These schemes help to break the cycle of unemployment and improve a person’s chances of returning to the labour market. Jobseekers receive information about all available employment support options, including Community Employment (CE), through the Intreo Service. Jobseekers receive one-to-one support from a case officer and all available and suitable options are discussed.

Sponsors can also promote their scheme vacancies within their local communities. At a local level, various methods of promoting CE have been arranged between my Department and local CE schemes, including targeting potentially eligible jobseekers to attend a CE Job-fare, where details of CE vacancies and employment opportunities are provided.

In addition CE sponsors can advertise their vacancies free-of-charge on the Department's JobsIreland website, www.jobsireland.ie. The process of posting vacancies is relatively straightforward and a tailored video is available online to assist sponsors. There are currently over 1,500 CE vacancies advertised on the site. These are visible to anyone who logs onto the site and users can narrow the search by location. Recent improvements were made to improve the way CE vacancies are displayed. Further enhancements to the website are planned. My Department apologises to users for any inconvenience caused pending full implementation of the new JobsIreland service, which will ultimately provide a much better service than the original website. Anyone experiencing difficulties with the website can contact the National Contact Centre on 1890 800 024 or email for assistance.

Referrals to CE vacancies are made by case officers in the local Intreo Centres and I have no plans to change this process. However, the referral process will be greatly facilitated following the planned integration of JobsIreland with my Department’s Activation Case Management System.

It is reasonable to assume that the difficulties in filling CE vacancies are also related to the significant drop in the Live Register over the last year or so arising from the much improved labour market. Any sponsor who has any recruitment concerns should contact their nearest Intreo Centre who will provide assistance.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputies.