Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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62. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if there will there be a review of the Jobpath scheme in view of the continuing fall in the live register and unemployment. [50577/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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With JobPath the department has procured additional resources to enable it to provide a high quality case managed employment support service to people who are long term unemployed and those most at risk of becoming long-term unemployed. The JobPath service was designed to augment and complement the Department’s existing employment service capacity, including that provided by LES.Prior to the introduction of Intreo and JobPath the Department had a case officer to live register ratio of approximately 1,500:1 compared to international benchmarks of less than 200:1. Today with the reduction in the unemployment rate and the increase in capacity, both internally through Intreo and externally through JobPath, the ratio has reached the upper limit of the international norms and is continuing to trend downwards.

An in-depth evaluation of the JobPath strand of the Department’s activation service has commenced data gathering. Completion of the evaluation is provisionally scheduled for the end of Quarter 3, 2018.

The Department has however commenced publishing reports on the performance of the service on a quarterly basis. The report can be accessed on the Department’s website.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.