John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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743. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of persons that engaged with JobPath and secured full-time employment that lasted for less than three, six and nine months and less than one year, respectively; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7109/19]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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JobPath is a service that supports people who are long-term unemployed to obtain and sustain paid employment. The service was launched in 2015 on a ‘rolling basis’ with referral numbers gradually increasing over time.

There are two phases to the service. During the first phase, of 12 months duration, a personal advisor (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.

In designing the JobPath service, the Department took steps to ensure the focus would be on sustained employment outcomes, rather than the traditional measurement of such contracts i.e. outcomes based on jobseekers being ‘placed into / starting’ employment. As a result the Department only makes payments for full time employment outcomes that last a minimum of 13 weeks. The Department is therefore not reporting on or making payments for any job sustainment outcomes of less than 13 weeks e.g. full time employment of 12 weeks duration - which will have been beneficial to the Jobseeker.

It should also be noted that jobseekers are supported by the service for up to 30 months and as such the duration of the client journey necessitates the requirement of a cohort based approach to reporting in order to produce accurate outcome data. For this reason, the number of clients entering employment and sustaining employment is expected to increase over time.

In regard to individual client’s employments which last less than 3, 6, 9 and 12 months, my Department does not collate and process such specific data and the information requested is currently unavailable. However the total number of jobseekers who engaged with JobPath, and had sustained full-time employment for 13, 26, 39 & 52 weeks up to the end of 2018 is shown in table 1 below.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

Table 1: Clients engaged with JobPath and full time employment outcomes