The Prime Minister has repeatedly declared that he wants to eradicate the culture of dependence of those who are unemployed and living off social benefits. The promotion of social mobility is a challenge that most governments try to address. The results are often disappointing.
The scheme to help unemployed people acquire skills to find a job was “privatised” in 2016.
The significant changes on the previous scheme consisted of the appointment of the General Workers’ Union to manage the scheme in return for a management fee, paying participants the full minimum wage, and striking off participants in the unemployment register.
A report by the National Audit Office has revealed that the scheme has so far cost the taxpayer €30 million creating just 44 jobs. While 600 unemployed people joined the scheme in 2016, the number reached 839 at the end of 2018. This wasteful scheme raises several questions that need to be answered by the Education Ministry, Jobsplus, who are the owners of this scheme, and the GWU.
The first question that the ministry and Jobsplus should answer is whether, at the time of privatising the Community Workers Scheme, as the present scheme was known before 2016, proper due diligence was undertaken to determine the competence of the bidders to run the scheme.
Clearly, from the results obtained so far, the GWU has not been successful at all in reducing significantly long-term unemployment through this scheme.
Deploying people in public entities like schools, local councils and NGOs is just hiding the failure of this scheme to reach its objectives.
The Audit Office report makes a damning comment on the oversight function of Jobsplus on this scheme when it states: “Jobsplus is not reviewing the financial statements (of the GWU Foundation) for any significant and unusual transactions”.
This practice is hardly the quality of scrutiny that taxpayers expect from a public entity that is financed by their money.
The government’s decision to strike off participants in the scheme from the unemployment register and include them as employed in the private sector is devious. It is a way of creating the impression that long-term unemployment is being reduced with the unemployed joining the private sector.
The NAO also noted that the government recently increased the salaries of those on the scheme by €200 a month. The NAO report is right in saying that “given the improved working conditions, the risk exists that the scheme becomes an end in itself as participants became increasingly reluctant to seek more gainful employment in more productive sectors”.
The wasteful practices financed by taxpayers’ money are just one acute failure of this scheme. Even more worrying is the government’s lack of credibility in promoting social mobility by equipping people with skills to make them employable in real jobs that the economy provides.
Making people more dependant on social support when they can be trained to become productive members of society is an injustice. Social support is meant for those who need a helping hand to get by because of debilitating circumstances in their lives.
The Education Ministry, Jobsplus and the GWU owe it to taxpayers and the social partners to explain why this scheme for the long-term unemployed has produced such poor results.