On our Jobs committee we had a report from researchers called Indecon, that showed that Jobs Clubs and Local Employment schemes are supportive and effective. They’re a public service, not to be confused with #JobPath and Seetec, which are private, ineffective, and punish more than they support. Yet what was the recommendation? That we should look for PRIVATE bidders for the good PUBLICwork that the Jobs Clubs and LE schemes do!! Doesn’t make sense. This is coming from a right-wing, for-profit agenda, driven by the EU. It must be resisted.

MORE PUBLIC MONEY WASTED. That’s Minister Doherty’s plan for JOBPATH and the unemployed. She intends renewing the multi million Euro contracts with dodgy companies who got the ‘gig’ last time – private businesses contracted for ‘job activation’ schemes that “patronised..manipulated and bullied” the people they were meant to help – the unemployed. And they call this ‘Social Protection’! I spoke about this in the Dáil earlier today.

Jobpath is about humiliating and punishing the unemployed, not helping. We are paying private companies millions a year to hound the unemployed into now paying precarious jobs with litle security. The scandal should end now.

JOBPATH IS AN ABUSIVE RIP-OFF. As a private company it’s given public money for thwarting the lives of people looking for work. I had the opportunity to question witnesses at a Dáil committee reviewing an investigation of Jobpath and it was infuriating. The video here is brief – just my own comments and questions to the witnesses, but you can check the Oireachtas website for more testimony. Try committee room 4 on 17.1.19 at around 11am

PRIVATISED WELFARE. That’s more or less what the Dept of Social Protection did with dole and ‘job activation schemes’. A bit like the film “I Daniel Blake”. And this heartless and inhumane privatised system was warmly welcomed by our firends – THE TROIKA! No surprises there. I asked at the Dáil committee about sanctions against the unemployed by the private agencies the government now uses instead of State employees – 359 to 16,451 cases in less than 6 years. Not impressed by the answers.

SeeTec are a private ‘for profit’ company used by the Dept of Social Protection to run ’employment activation’ services. They were done for fraud in the UK, but our government still gave them the contract, and unemployed people here are finding themselves done down by them. This clip of our questions put in Committee to the Department has been shortened. Just a ‘flavour’ of the Department’s responses are included, but you can check out the remainder here: http://bit.ly/2G7DDDt