Burton’s new jobs site

It looks like Tánaiste Joan Burton is preparing to deliver the coup de grace to Jobs Ireland, the recruitment website that in 2008 found itself drawn into the Fás mullarkey that erupted over the now-defunct State body's lavish spending.

The funding of the website was one of the items investigated by an internal audit report at Fás, since disbanded and replaced by Solas. The audit found that a company was paid €1.7 million to create and manage Jobs Ireland, even though the site apparently duplicated services available elsewhere.

Burton's Department of Social Protection, which took the site in-house when Fás was disbanded, recently tendered for applicants to build a new jobs vacancy and employee matching website to replace Jobs Ireland.

The department said this week that Jobs Ireland is “approaching the end of its life”, has limited functionality and doesn’t interact properly with the department’s internal IT system.

“The department will make a final decision on whether or not to proceed with replacing the system once the tenders are received and evaluated,” it said, although the department declined to reveal its budget for the new jobs website.

No doubt it will still be a nice piece of work for whoever lands it.