Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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276. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the amount her Department paid to a company (details supplied) since the beginning of the contract in summer 2015; the number of unemployed persons that have remained in sustainable employment for more than 12 months after having been referred to the company by her Department in view of the fact that the company is an employment advisory company; and the procedures for redeployment the company has in place when making its own Irish employees redundant. [41165/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department does not publish the individual fees paid to the JobPath providers because of commercial sensitivity. This commercial sensitivity is in relation to the release of the information having the potential to both influence the management of the contracts currently in place and any future procurement that may be undertaken and thus putting the State at a disadvantage.

The JobPath service is being delivered through a payment by results model and the initial set up costs and the ongoing running costs are borne by the companies. Fees comprise an initial registration fee and thereafter job sustainment fees are payable for each 13-week period of sustained employment, up to a maximum of 52 weeks.

The jobs must be full-time, that is, employment for more than 30 hours a week.This means JobPath companies are incentivised financially to assist people to find full-time jobs that they are likely to hold down and are therefore suited to. My Department verifies each individual job sustainment fee claim before payment, confirming that the customer is in employment and no longer on the Live Register.

In relation to the number of participants to find full-time employment, it is important to note that jobseekers may be supported through the service for up to 30 months - under the service jobseekers have access to a personal adviser (PA) who works with them over two phases. During the first phase, of 12 months duration, the PA provides practical assistance in searching, preparing for, securing and sustaining employment. The second phase starts if the jobseeker is successful in finding work. During this phase the PA continues to work with the jobseeker for a further period of at least three months, and up to 12 months. In addition to the two phases jobseekers may also undertake training while with the service and this may extend the period the jobseeker is supported through the service for up to a further 6 months.

It will therefore take time to accumulate a sufficient number of clients (who have completed their engagement period with the service) for complete and robust outcome data to be available. With this in mind, it is intended that an econometric evaluation of the service will commence at the end of 2017. The Department has however commenced publishing initial cohort reports on the performance of the service, with the most recent report, which provides details of the performance outcomes for three jobseeker cohorts - Q3 and Q4 2015, and Q1 2016 having been published on the Department’s website recently.

The report is available at:

JobPath providers provide the JobPath service under contract to my Department. The providers are responsible for compliance with all the statutory requirements to be satisfied by an employer with regards to its own employees. The JobPath contract specifies the duration of the contract, as a period of six (6) years. Following completion of the contract duration, any decisions in relation to redeployment or redundancy arrangements for employees are entirely a matter for the JobPath provider.