Sir, – According to Joan Burton, the JobBridge scheme has been very successful (Home News, August 7th). In the foreword of the Department of Social Protection’s 2011 report published recently, Ms Burton states JobBridge “places are open to jobseekers who were unable to obtain employment after training, apprenticeship or graduation.’’
While this may be true, this statement fails to take into account the stipulations which have to be met by these jobseekers. In order to be eligible, jobseekers must have been on the Live Register for a period of three months of the last six months. Thus, anyone who is unemployed and not eligible to receive any form of payment from the Department of Social Protection cannot avail of this scheme. This includes graduates who have not worked long enough to build up adequate PRSI payments and those living with their parents whose means are above the threshold for participating in the scheme.
Another flaw with the scheme is that it is open to abuse. It can be argued that the scheme is actively encouraging job displacement as jobs which were once paid at least the minimum wage have now been converted to internships.
The scheme seems to be a win-win situation for business and the Coalition alike, but does not seem to benefit interns as much. Businesses can hire employees at a minimal cost (the State pays the €50 weekly allowance as well as any social welfare payment) while the Government can state that unemployment is decreasing (while on a JobBridge internship for a period of six or nine months, interns are excluded from the Live Register figures).
Interns are lured by the promise of a fully paid job on completion of the internship but figures show that less than 40 per cent of interns have found employment upon immediate completion of their internship. It would be interesting to discover how many of these individuals found work in a sector connected to their internships and how long their period of employment lasted. Until figures such as these are published, it seems absurd and opportunistic to brand the scheme a success. – Yours, etc,