Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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602. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question No. 628 of 22 October 2019, if the nature of clerical error is an isolated incident with the company involved; if not, the number of such errors with the company and the dates on which they occurred; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50390/19]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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603. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the safeguards in place to ensure that the signature on the personal progression plan forms used by Turas Nua is in fact the signature of the person identified on the form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50391/19]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 602 and 603 together.

When a customer completes and signs a Personal Progression Plan (PPP), it is countersigned by their Employment Adviser and an electronic copy issued to the customer. My Department has not had any notifications from customers who signed a PPP that it was not their signature on the PPP. On occasion a customer may decline to sign a PPP and in that event an Employment Adviser will sign as appropriate in the space provided to the Employment Adviser and note that the customer has declined to sign. The customer is then given a hard copy of the unsigned PPP. The individual matter raised previously by Deputy Boyd Barrett was in the circumstance where the customer declined to sign a PPP and the Employment Adviser signed the wrong box. I am advised that my Department is currently engaging with Turas Nua to identify any other possible circumstance where this may have occurred.

The Personal Progression Plan (PPP) typically contains a schedule of activities, actions and job-focused targets, taking into account the person’s specific employment preferences. The PPP is a crucial element of each jobseeker’s engagement with any of the Department’s activation services and generally will be a document that will be reviewed throughout the person’s engagement period as they develop employment related skills and competencies or job related experience.

Jobseekers are asked to sign the PPP as an indication of their agreement to carry out the activation measures contained in the document. My Department will pay an initial registration fee to a JobPath provider when the customer has engaged with the service. A completed PPP is taken as evidence of engagement, a customer signature is not a requirement as evidence of engagement.