Welfare payments reduced for 11% of Meath JobPath participants for failure to engage 

JobPath aims to reduce the levels of long-term unemployed by selecting people, noted as being without work for an extended period of time, at random to enter the mentorship programme. Picture: PA

More than one in 10 people enrolled in the JobPath unemployment scheme in Meath have had their social welfare payments reduced for failing to engage properly.

Some 11% of that county's cohort on the scheme had their payment reduced in the 14 months up to March 2020, or 190 people all told.

JobPath aims to reduce the levels of long-term unemployed by selecting people, noted as being without work for an extended period of time, at random to enter the mentorship programme.

Suspension of a welfare payment

Suspension of a welfare payment typically happens when a jobseeker “fails to engage” with the service, the Department of Social Protection said.

Meath’s rate of reduced payments is by some distance the highest in the country, ahead of Dublin in second place with 7%, the figures, released to Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy, show.

Meanwhile, two of the worst counties for such engagement are in Munster – Tipperary and Waterford have levels of disengagement of 6% each, or 100 and 80 respectively during 2019 and the first two months of 2020.

Mayo had the best rate of engagement as measured in non-suspension of payments, with fewer than 10 such sanctions on a total of just under 2,250 people.

Cork’s unemployed population was similarly compliant with the programme – just 50 people, or 1.3% of the 3,800 people referred to JobPath in the county up to March 2020 had their payment stopped.

State spent €260m on JobPath

All told, the State has spent €260m on the JobPath programme since its inception under then social protection minster Joan Burton in 2015, the peak for that expense coming in 2018 with a cost of €71.7m to the exchequer.

Last October, the contract with the two companies charged with the provision of JobPath, Seetec and Turas Nua, was extended until the end of 2021, when referrals to the current system are due to stop.

The Department of Social Protection said it had suspended reduced rates of pay for all welfare payments since the beginning of the pandemic. As such, the rates of reductions released cover 2019 and the first two months of 2020.

Just under 88,000 people have been enrolled on JobPath since 2019, the figures show, with a large-scale reduction in that figure seen since the pandemic began due to referrals having been stopped on three separate occasions in 2020.

Some 50,401 people were engaged with the programme in 2019, reducing to 32,738 in 2020, while just 4,810 people have enrolled on the programme to date in 2021, which recommenced officially in March.

Roughly 2,280 of that overall figure have had their payments reduced.

The department said it could not confirm if non-engagement was the sole reason for those payments being reduced due to the “range of factors” which could lead to such an eventuality.

JobPath has been extended twice since the Dáil voted to suspend referrals in April 2019.

The scheme has been a frequent target for criticism from opposition TDs due to its rates of job progression tending to be less than 10%.

The department said there was an “overall positive impact” for 37% of referrals to the scheme in 2018.