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OF THE 226,851 people referred to the government’s JobPath service, only 14,617 (6.44%) held down a job for over a year.
The latest figures released show that in the four years that the scheme has been operational, the government has spent over €182 million on it.
Of the 226,851, only 74,000 are now engaged with the scheme, according to the JobPath figures.
They also show that under the government initiative, 51,548 people commenced work, but over 101,303 people who were referred to JobPath in the last four years got nothing from the scheme.
JobPath is an employment activation service provided to people who have been on the live register for more than 12 months and are trying to secure and sustain full-time paid employment or self-employment.
The two private companies employed by the State, Turas Nua and Seetec, to operate the scheme have received €75.7 million and €73.3 million respectively to carry out its work.
The two contractors are paid to work with both the jobseeker and employers to identify employment opportunities. They receive payments when someone who has taken part in the scheme gains proven employment.
Period of employment
JobPath figures for the last four years show that of the 51,548 people who commenced work under the programme, the majority only stayed in a job for a period of 13 weeks (31,186).
A total of 24,234 people sustained work for 26 weeks, while 18,808 sustained work for 39 weeks.
Just 14,617 people sustained work for 52 weeks.
Since the rollout of the scheme, questions have been raised about the payments the private companies get in relation to the number of jobseekers on the books.
The latest figures show that 27,830 people were referred to JobPath more than once, with 27,476 referred twice. A total of 354 people were referred on the programme three times
Sustainment payments are made to the companies over the course of a year in respect of each person who secures employment having engaged in the JobPath process.
TheJournal.ie revealed last year that the private companies contracted by the State to run the scheme are entitled to €3,718 for every jobseeker that gains sustained employment for one year through the JobPath scheme.
Those that refuse to engage with the scheme can have their social welfare reduced or cut off.
“Earlier this year, Sinn Féin brought forward a Dáil motion which called for an end to JobPath referrals and an end to the mandatory nature of the scheme. This motion was passed by the Dáil, yet Minister Doherty chose to ignore the will of the Dáil and has to date, taken no action.
“I am calling on Minister Doherty to open her eyes. JobPath has failed. It has to go,” Sinn Féin’s John Brady told TheJournal.ie.
Despite the Dáil voting for referrals to JobPath to end, the government scheme is still up and running.
Contract with private companies
Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty said in a recent parliamentary question that the contract held by the two private companies commenced in 2015 and, under the terms of the contracts signed with the providers, will run for at least six years.
“This includes a period of at least four years of client referrals to the end of 2019, and a run-off period of at least two years,” she said.
Doherty added that the contract includes an option which could extend the term of referrals for two periods of up to 12 months each the end of 2019.
The minister said:
The process of procuring contracted public employment services for 2020 and beyond is in its early stages of development. My officials are working to design a procurement model that will balance the need for value for money for taxpayers with the importance of preserving high-quality employment advisory services.
She added that as part of this process the ongoing requirements of the public employment service including the period for client referrals under JobPath are currently being considered.
“To date no decisions have been taken in this regard. However, my Department is currently considering how best to continue to provide a high-quality public employment service that meets the needs of all jobseekers, while looking to provide employment services to those most distant from the labour market and to people who have not previously availed of these services,” she said.
The Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee heard yesterday that the department had defended the success of the scheme stating that 20% of the people that go through the programme get employment.
Correspondence to members of the committee also stated that the department plans to carry out another report on the scheme to highlight the savings that it has yielded in terms of having people working for a period of time, rather than being on social welfare.
Independent TD Catherine Connolly said she disagreed with the department’s defence of the programme, stating that having a State agency, rather than private companies, involved in employment would be a more “wholesome approach”.
She also said reports on the scheme “assess a spectrum of criteria to fit the result that is wanted”. She added that JobPath is “not giving value for money”.
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Welfare should be cut off for after 36 months those physically able to work. Otherwise you’ll create lifers who live off the taxpayer.
@R Farrell: There
@R Farrell: Bring back workhouses. That would solve the problem right? But build them where decent folk don’t have to gaze on the lowly poor.
@R Farrell: and what happens to these people that are cut off?
@Thomas Maher: they find work.
@SFNutters: ridiculous and because youve some level of intelligence i think you know it is. The people that dont take up work end up homeless or turn to crime or in some way become an even bigger burden on the state but as i said you already know that
@R Farrell: it should be reduced after a set time…10 percent a year till max of 50 percent. And it build up 10 percent each year with employment
@Dan: sounds great but crime with increase
@R Farrell: right , do what happens if someone lives in let’s say , where I live , Tipperary town which has an official unemployment rate of 38.4 % ?.. I say official because people such as myself who are on this so called activation scheme aren’t considered unemployed for statistical reasons.. before you and your cohort begin to blow up about dole wasters etc I have been traveling all over the country in search of work and have recently got a job, starting next month in MAYO, a place where I’ll have to relocate to knowing no one, I can do this as I have no family etc here in tipp but many aren’t in a position to do this. So before you all climb up on your high horses making sweeping statements remember that many are on the dole due to circumstances they cannot control.
I can’t believe people are getting such strong wifi connection all the way up on they’re extremely high horses.
@R Farrell: Shut up and pay my dole you working class donkey. I’m watching that episode of the Simpsons now where Homer has to collect his car in New York. Wohooo!
@R Farrell: I agree! I dont care if families starve! Don’t care if parents are trying very hard to find work! All on the dole should be treated as second class! Denied access to voting etc
As a former supervisor to another employment activation scheme Tús I have seen grown adults cry because they couldn’t participate on my scheme and contribute to the local community. Community and voluntary groups are suffering due to jobpath as can be seen up and down the country tidy towns groups especially are feeling the brunt as participantion numbers are falling. In my time as a supervisor you could see the ones who wanted to work and those who wouldn’t engage and I always tried to place participants in areas that matched their interests in order to help to help employment chances. Some were successful others were not but the ones that were successful in gaining further employment or progressing to education were self driven but needed direction of where to look and who to talk to
@David o Gorman: I was a supervisor in a CE scheme and some people on it were called to jobpath meetings even though they were on a scheme. It’s just a scam to manipulate figures
@David o Gorman: I found Tús excellent, supportive. My supervisor genuinely wanted the best for me and really took on board what I wanted to work at. My placement worked out very well and gave me the boost I needed.
Seetec Jobpath however, were only interested in throwing me into any job so I could get off their books and they could claim the credit. I was actually 4 months in to the application process for the civil service clerical officer when sent to Jobpath. Having said this to the hugely uninterested ‘case worker’ I was assigned, she just dismissively said “Thats not the kind of job we deal with here” Unbelieveable!
Well I’m now a full time, permanent civil servant. And I’d credit TÚS with having a lot to do with that and Seetec Jobpath with having absolutely nothing to do with it.
@John Murray: Well done, too many people would just give in and comply with jobpath for fear if losing their payment.
@Caroline Otoole: Cheers! The attitude of the people working there is disgraceful, they are only interested in their figures, they don’t give a damn about helping people find careers.
@John Murray: I too was on this crazy scheme TWICE , this time only a few (3 I think) months after finishing the last one. Both times the job path person said , and I quote exactly “ you know there’s nothing we can do for you don’t you ? . Couple of degrees etc etc . A few weeks ago I got a job offer ( through my own effort ) and when I told the jobpath woman she asked me to sign something which turned out to be a statement claiming I’d gotten the job through job path. I enquired as to whether or not she was on commission and she replied in the affirmative, you should have seen the crestfallen look when I refused to sign it ( new job pays just over the 100k) … I know I know HURRAY FOR ME
@Liam Carlin: They’ve a disgraceful attitude to their work. I flat out refused to sign that too, as they played no role whatsoever in me getting the civil service job. I warned them that if they made any attempt to claim otherwise I’d report them for fraud. They continued to harass my employer for six months, trying to get them to confirm If I was still working there, thankfully under GDPR they were under no obligation to tell them anything.
@John Murray: I have already warned my new boss about the near certainty that they’ll attack him with emails etc trying to get confirmation that they played a role in my getting a job . I told the jobpath woman that if she could come up with one single thing she had to do with my getting a job I’d sign it and double her commission out of my own pocket .. no reply
@Liam Carlin: Good man! Unbelievable bunch of chancers, the lengths they go to to grab their commission! My HR dept. also got fed up of them.
A job, work for minimum wage, zero hr contract, get treated like a slave, you can’t join a union… If you do its one we choose because we have them in our pocket… No prospect of getting a mortgage. We are creating a tenement class to serve the rich.
@Joan Murray: found my own employment and I have Turas Nua claiming that it was them that found me the job..they keep trying to contact me every few months for there records to keep the money flowing in for them..it’s the biggest scam going..had me doing my cv the 3 times I was in there..
@Joan Murray: almost full employment? Im afraid not. People who are unemployed but on activation schemes, jobpath etc arent included in the unemployment figures the actual figures ive read quoted for unemployment range from 12-18% but those numbers wouldnt suit leo or fg
My employer took on 2 people on job path scheme, with the plan of making them permanent after 3 months probation. Was easy enough work, hours 9-5.30 weekdays etc.
They had to be let go after 3 weeks, they were beyond hopeless. Had no interest in doing anything, apart from walking around scratching their plum-sacks. Employer said never again, and took on 2 people the standard way, and they’re still there.
I know that’s unfair on the people that do try to get proper employment through job path.
@Conor Mc Lysaght: Once again, FG manipulating figures, giving 150 million to 2 private, inappropriate companies. No significant results. Plenty of extra stress on the hard pressed though. It’s just like the housing etc, all talk and promises but no significant results… Who are the real wasters here…?
No surprises here. There are those who have gone through a rough period and return to employment and those who are chronically unemployed. Every society has both and there are no magic solutions, Karl Max spoke about this more then a hundred years ago.
@Rathminder: the issue isnt the people unemployed, the issue is taxpayers being thrown around like snuff at a wake to private companies
@Thomas Maher: *money
@Thomas Maher: exactly the thing is a scam
The level of ignorance here is shocking. People actually think that people choose to be unemployed than getting paid a decent wage to work? After all we’ve been through, people who earned a decent wage losing their jobs and unable to get another one then having to retrain and gain experience in their new career? Do people think it is easy? No wonder the unemployed people find it hard to break perceptions and return to the workforce.
We have had many people on the tus scheme in our tidy towns group. They were brillant and all wanted a job but their age was mostly the issue. They worked in the community for 12 month. Then they went to the private company turas nua. They sat in front of a computer for weeks on end. Their cv was done up and honestly it was the worst cv I’ve ever seen , this scheme is a total con job and these companys are making millions to massage the figures.
As a general rule if your father and mother work,worked so will you if they didn’t the likelihood is you won’t governments know this and work it into the budgets .there are those that have no intention of working .If you look around at the amount of people that come into this country and find work and appear to be happy to do so and if you look at the amount of indigenous people on the scratcher is has to make you think
Not referencing Job Path here but as a woker in the Corporate world i would have serious concerns with the amount of young people taking stress leave at present. Its out of control. Doctors signing off at the drop of a hat
This scheme is an absolute joke… The Intreo jobs website doesn’t function – I was told they were upgrading it. Same reply 12 months later. As an employer, I then tried to use the services of Turas Nua on the one occasion I decided to try it – I got 6 CVs out 2 weeks later, most candidates unsuitable or unavailable for the varied hours… Bring back FAS service… Worked much better
These schemes don’t work. Ce schemes for example people just because they are on the dole get to work with children or other vulnerable people. Taking real jobs from people who are qualified. Then even if the person is good at the role , as in tus scheme there is no actual position at the end just another person to take the ce scheme. Surely it would make more sense to have real jobs for people to fill for example administration work , handy work. Not as a brief contract but as a long term goal.
As someone who is now on this sham of a program I am a 61year old male who owns my own apartment mortgage free. I was advised by these people to retrain and take a retraining course that would take 2 years to compleate, a total waste of time, also I asked my adviser about their qualifications and they let slip they were unemployed for 4 years before finding this job to help others. Total waste of time.
So, 94% of people sent to Jobpath are back to square one in less than a year. That is a phenomenal failure rate. This scheme is beyond useless. Its It’s basically a tool the government use to massage unemployment figures.
I’d love to work, but childcare costs are a huge obstacle. OH’s wages cover the rent, bus fares for the week and €50 or so towards food so I’d be solely responsible for childcare and the weekly food shop – there’d be nothing left for clothes, etc.
now sir I have been assigned as your mentor to smooth your way back to employment tell me about your self … ok after 29 years in the retail sector i was made redundant and took the option of returning to education to complete a degree which I have just finished and have secured employment in the associated sector though it is not full time at present actually it’s just a few hrs short of fulltime.. thanks sir now after looking at your resu
They privatised the FAS system and have spent tens of millions, the entire time making a handful of private companies rich and the people get pushed through a system that does not help them at all.
My wife was on CE scheme and that finished early this year. She dis enjoy every minute in that employment and was very happy on that scheme because: 1) she found the work she loved (working with people with disabilities) 2) she worked locally so she became part of community as all people she worked with were locals and 3) she gained experience in healthcare, she got trained and so on. She started to look for a job as soon as she finished her CE scheme. She sent a lot of CV’s and so on and got few interviews. BUT THEN two weeks after she finished CE scheme she got called to Turas Nua. And shit started… “you must to come this Friday at 2 pm to identify your personal strengths and needs”, you must come this Wednesday to chat about your progression”, “what dyou mean you don’t have where to leave your child? tell your husband to look after him. What he is doing? Student? What he studies? Well you have to come because you social welfare will be stopped”, “Get another car for your self” “why you don’t have driving licence? What do you mean you re afraid to drive?” and so on…. They also gave her to sign a consent form where she allows them to send her cv’s and contact employers on her behalf. So my wife got interviews 40km away… That’s not far for me, but for her it is far away. Then, because she is not driving they tried to put her to work 10km away in the pub: “the road is wide that direction so you can walk, don’t you?… oh, probably that would be too dangerous…” I mean they simply wanted her to get anything so they can get money for “their involvement”. Anyway, my wife got a job the one she applied before she got involved with that crowd. In fact she got three or four job offers locally where she applied before she was sent to Turas Nua. It just took around 4 weeks to get garda vetting and so on so within those 4 weeks she had to attend those clowns. As soon as she signed the contract with her new employer she informed Social Welfare that she got a job. She also sent an email to Turas Nua stating that she got a job. That means they have nothing to do with her new job etc. And then it started…. Next day after she sent an email to Turas Nua she was at her new work where of course she can’t use her phone. Later that evening she found more than ten missed calls from Turas Nua. Also she had a message asking details about her new emplyer etc. She came back home and said “I really don’t want to talk to them because of the way they were treating me and overall this is nothing to deal with them”. We then looked at the consent form she signed and it was a small line somewhere on the bottom where it says “you can withdraw you consent at any time” or something in these lines so we wrote a letter withdrawing her consent explaining that she got a job without help of Turas Nua, that she applied for that job before she got engaged with them etc. And all calls stopped. Now, one month later she got another missed call and an email from Turas Nua. In that email Turas Nua stated the dates when my wife signed a contract with an employer and when she started to work although my wife never gave that information to them so how do they know that? As soon as my wife informed social welfare that she got a job, she was taken of the register. So why social welfare gave information to Turas Nua with those dates? Probably because some friends in social welfare and turas nua are sharing information between themselves. Turas nua mentioned those dates and asked to give details of an employer because “they want to update a file”. What file? Why do they need to know where my wife works? OH, I probably do know why. Because they want money for that… Although they didn’t help my wife in any way. It is a SCAM. A BIG FAT SCAM.
This FF/FG government tells us we have to live in tenements as there is no other choice then sends off the unemployed to work in jobs the government has chosen with no regard for what field a person works in or previous training, given starvation wages and poor working conditions all so they at the top can use the money they save treating average citizens like cattle to give to multinational corporations in the staffing companies and vulture funds who handle all the day to day operations and real work they want to avoid.
That’s 12500 spent per person who are now in full time employment. They’ll theoretically pay more than it tax in a year or 2 when you break it down and are now not a drain on social welfare
so many people humiliated and treated like shit by this numpty run circus.
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