Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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541. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question No. 489 of 29 March 2022, the names and number of meetings held with the companies referred to in the reply as other organisations that were considering entering the Irish market. [18344/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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To clarify for the Deputy, officials from my Department have engaged extensively with interested parties in advance of the current procurement process for employment support services. As I have previously advised there have been over 140 engagements with the community sector including consultation on its views on how services can best be constructed to deliver quality services to the Department’s customers.

This included visits to every Local Employment Service and Job Club contractor in late 2019. The Department has engaged with their representatives, heard their concerns regarding the provision of services, their concerns regarding being able to make competitive bids for services and their views on the overall procurement process. Many of the issues raised by the Irish Local Development Network concerning the structure of services have been addressed in the overall design of the services being procured. There have been 15 formal meetings at official level with the Irish Local Development Network since 2019 on the procurement of employment services.

My officials have engaged with and met the trade union organisation SIPTU to hear their concerns regarding the interests of their members who are employed in the community sector and whose employers are contractors to my Department. Officials have had formal meetings with SIPTU specific to the ongoing restructuring of services on 4 occasions since 2019.

In contrast, at the request of organisations who sought to introduce themselves to the Department, my officials had introductory meetings with Maximus on 9^thDec 2021, Capita on 24^thSept 2021 and FedCap on 11^thMay 2021.