John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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260. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of referrals made to the local employment service in each of the years 2013 to 2017. [14286/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Local Employment Services form part of the State’s public employment service. This service is managed by the Department of Social Protection and delivered directly by its own Intreo service as well as by contractors, such as JobPath, Local Employment Service, and Job Club providers.

The expansion of the department’s activation capacity with the introduction of JobPath and the welcome reduction in the live register has allowed the department over the last two years to develop the activation service provided by the Local Employment Services (LES) across 12 Counties.

In 2016, LES providers were asked to increase the frequency with which they engage with activation jobseekers to enhance the quality of the services they provide. To facilitate this more intensive engagement, the Department reduced the number of people referred to the LES for the purpose of reducing caseloads so as to maintain a maximum caseload 120:1 per case officer.

The LES were also requested to increase the time they allocate to work with each individual jobseeker and in 2017 bands were introduced with set engagement patterns so that a LES case officer with 101-120 clients would be expected to have monthly meetings with the clients, 81-100 clients every three weeks and 80 or fewer client every two weeks.

Smaller caseloads are key to providing the one to one intensive type of engagement which long term unemployed clients benefit from most.

The following table shows the referrals to the Local Employment Service each year from 2013 to 2017.

*Due to a change in the Department’s case management system during 2015, it is not possible to provide accurate referral figures for that year.