Fás help may hinder jobseekers, says report

A NEW study of how State agencies encourage and assist the jobless to return to work has found that they have had limited success and are in some cases counterproductive.

The report, to be published today by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), proposes that those in receipt of benefits be compelled to seek work or accept training in return for their entitlements. It wants this new approach to be backed by “effective monitoring and sanctions”.

The report will be formally launched by the Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton.

Overall, it finds that those who are assisted by the State while on the dole were less likely to return to work than the average welfare recipient.

The reason for this, the report postulates, is that welfare recipients learned “as a consequence of the process, that they were unlikely to face monitoring or sanctions as a result of failure to search actively for, or obtain, employment, leading to some decline in job search intensity”.

Participation in programmes run by Fás was found to increase the probability of subsequent employment by between 10 and 14 per cent.

However, Fás “activation interviews” with jobseekers were found to impact negatively on job prospects, with the chances of entering employment being about 17 per cent lower for those who went through the interview process.

As a result, “the cumulative effect of training plus activation interview was either zero, or at best weakly positive”, the authors said.

Among a number of questionable practices by State agencies, the study found that those signing on after losing a job who had claimed unemployment benefit in the past were excluded from active assistance in job searches and training.

The report says that this “would appear to run counter to the underlying rationale of activation policies, namely, to assist those most likely to encounter difficulties in the labour market to find work”.

Another failing identified was that one in four of those unemployed people eligible for assistance by the State – in the form of training schemes and specific help in job searches – were not in fact identified by the relevant authorities. Poor communications between the Department of Social Protection and Fás, the State training agency, were found to be the primary reason for the failure.

The report says, however, that ongoing improvements should help prevent welfare recipients falling through the cracks in this manner in the future.

On introducing an element of compulsion for those receiving benefits, the report stresses “the potential benefits of Ireland following best practice in most European countries”.

The report is a detailed evaluation of the Irish National Employment Action Plan drawn up in 2003. The data used in the study cover the period from September 2006 to July 2008. In July 2008 unemployment stood at 6.3 per cent. It rose very sharply shortly thereafter and now stands at just under 15 per cent.

Among other points the report stresses that those who have been out of work for a protracted period find it harder to return to employment even when job creation starts growing once economies recover.

This in turn has wider consequences – the long-term unemployed face higher incidences of ill-health, according to the report.