I propose to take Questions Nos. 24, 50 and 52 together.
The Department is establishing a new National Employment and Entitlements Service (NEES), as provided for in the Programme for Government, which integrates employment and benefit payment services within the Department. The Pathways to Work strategy which was launched by the Government on 23rd February incorporates the provision to establish the NEES and commits to a new approach to the provision of services for unemployed people. The objective is to reduce the level of long term unemployment and to ensure those who are unemployed will be provided with appropriate advice, support, education and training to take advantage of new job opportunities as the economy recovers. The Pathways to Work has five strands:
more regular and on-going engagement with people who are unemployed,
greater targeting of activation places and opportunities,
incentivising the take-up of opportunities,
incentivising employers to provide more jobs for people who are unemployed, and
reforming institutions to deliver better services to people who are unemployed.
In considering the resource requirements required to implement the programme set out in Pathways to Work and in establishing the NEES, it is expected that the integration of staff from FÁS, the Community Welfare Service and the Department will realise efficiencies. This integration will free up resources and staff for the more resource intense role of case management and activation. There will be staff savings at local level where customers will now be dealing with one agency rather than interacting with three different agencies in three different locations. There will also be synergies in the alignment and rationalisation of corporate service such as HR, Finance, and IT Payments.
The Department expects to realise further efficiency gains from the continued upgrading and development of IT support systems and the automation of routine resource intensive operations. This will release staff who are currently involved in manual routine work to resource the case management service.
The NEES project plan also allows for the outsourcing of some of the case management and activation services to complement the Department's own resources in referral and job placement. Work on the possible involvement of private and third sector providers is ongoing within the Department. Over the course of the last three months meetings have been held with a number of stakeholders including representatives from the Department of Work and Pensions, representatives from international employment service providers and representatives of Irish recruitment companies. A specific proposal on how to integrate private sector provision into the services the Department currently provides has not yet been worked out.
Three advantages of such a model are:
Firstly it gives access to the expertise and knowledge of the private sector — people who have a better "on the ground" knowledge of workforce requirements than the public sector could be expected to have.
Secondly it allows us to "flex" our resources by bringing in extra private sector resources as required to match peaks and troughs in demand.
Thirdly, the payment by results approach minimises the call on scarce exchequer cash resources.
It is to be noted however that the use of external resources is nothing new — the Department, previously FÁS, engages c 23 Local Employment Service (LES) providers to provide employment services including job coaching, mentoring, and job search assistance to the people who are long term unemployed and funds these activities to the value of c €20 million p.a. There is currently c 300 staff engaged by LES companies in the provision of these employment services. The Department also has similar external contract arrangements in place to cater for the requirements of clients with disabilities who wish to return to the workforce.
In addition, the Department has a history of contracting with external contractors for the provision of services — namely An Post for the provision of payment services and contracted Branch Managers for the provision of customer facing services in approximately 60 locations.
I would like to stress that the Pathways to Work policy is not a policy working in isolation from other actions. The Government launched its Action Plan for Jobs with a view to creating a net additional 100,000 jobs over the next five years. Pathways to Work are a complementary policy designed to support people currently on the live register to access those jobs.