Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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123. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the level of funding allocated to local employment services and jobs clubs in 2019 and 2020. [35008/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department contracts for the provision of Local Employment Services (LES) and Job Clubs to provide services and facilities to support unemployed people to enter or return to work.

In 2019 the total contracted value for Local Employment Services was €19.6m and the same value again in 2020. The total contracted value for Job Clubs was €5.3m in 2019 and €5m in 2020.

Up to now, all contracts for local employment services were issued for a single 12 month period and rolled-over on an annual basis. Many of these contracts have been in place, with very little change, since the early 1990s. Good governance and national and EU public procurement rules require that my Department does not continue this practice of simply rolling over contracts for employment services. Therefore in order to ensure service continuity and enhance the provision of employment services, my Department is undertaking a two phased procurement of employment services on a multi-annual basis.

Under phase 1, the Department will shortly roll out a new regional employment service model whereby service providers are paid for each client they engage with. These new multi-annual contracts put a strong emphasis on service quality and community linkages. Phase 2 of the procurement process, later this year, will see the new regional employment service model roll out Statewide, including those areas where current providers of contracted local employment services operate.