Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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911. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the cost of the JobPath service to the State in 2021. [1108/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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JobPath is an employment advisory and assistance service that is a payment by results model and all set-up and day-to-day operational costs are borne by the companies.  The companies are paid on the basis of performance and with the exception of the initial registration fee; payments are made only when a client has achieved sustained employment.  The overall cost of JobPath will be determined by the number of people who participate in the programme and the number who get sustainable jobs.

The gross total expenditure on JobPath in 2021 was €34m.

Please note this is gross expenditure and does not take into account the savings made in welfare payments for those who secured sustained employment.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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912. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if her Department has carried out a review of the JobPath service based on participants' experiences in order to ascertain if the programme helped them in finding employment. [1109/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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JobPath was contracted to provide employment assistance and advice to jobseekers. Performance is recorded through the outcomes of those who participated in the services and other than a small initial registration fee, the contractors receive payments on the basis of persons gaining and sustaining employment. While it is not a job placement service it has a proven track record of providing sustained employment. Up to the end of November 2021, over 324,000 Jobseekers had commenced their engagement with JobPath. To date over 75,000 jobseekers have commenced employment during their engagement period with JobPath. Over 25,000 of these were still employed after 12 months. These figures do not take account that many participants are still with the service and will get a job in the months ahead.

To ensure that services are being delivered satisfactorily from the customers perspective, my Department has commissioned regular Customer Satisfaction Surveys, the latest of which was completed at the end of 2020. Since the surveys began in 2016, over 10,000 customers have responded to the surveys, which are conducted over the phone. The results have been overwhelmingly positive with overall satisfaction at 74% in the most recent survey. The evidence available to my Department indicates that the experience of customers who have engaged with the JobPath service to date has been positive. The results of the Customer Satisfaction Surveys are published on gov.ie at www.gov.ie/en/publication/96cc45-surveys-2015/#2020

In addition, the 2019 OECD econometric evaluation of JobPath published by the Department demonstrated that the outcomes for participating jobseekers, both in terms of employment and earnings, are better than those of non-participants. Weekly earnings of people who secured employment after JobPath engagement are 17% higher than the weekly employment earnings of people who secured employment without the support of JobPath in 2018.

Taken with the 26% improvement in employment outcomes in the same period, it means the overall positive employment/earnings impact is 37% in 2018 for those who are supported by the JobPath service. These findings demonstrate that jobseekers who engage with JobPath are significantly more likely to get a positive employment outcome than those not supported by the service.

Finally, the JobPath contract has a built-in ‘Service Guarantee’ meaning each jobseeker is guaranteed a baseline level of service including frequency of meetings with case officers and a transparent complaints process.