3. The role of public employment services and two public works programmes in Ireland
This chapter outlines how the public employment service (PES) in Ireland is set-up to help connect people with jobs and details the active labour market policies that it utilises to help achieve this goal. The chapter goes into detail on two of Ireland’s active labour market programmes, its public works schemes called Community Employment (CE) and Tús, to outline the aims, objectives, organisation, and changes over time. The discussion in this chapter sets the context for the impact evaluation of both CE and Tús that follows in the report.
The chapter discusses the system of support Ireland has in place for its jobseekers, covering the services and programmes it provides to jobseekers and their changes over time. It also discusses in more detail the Tús and Community Employment (CE) programmes, two large activation programmes that Ireland has to support its long-term unemployed individuals. These programmes are also evaluated in more detail later in this report.
The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, the different institutions responsible for supporting jobseekers are outlined and their interactions are described. A description is given on how this has changed over time and the reasons underlying these changes. Second, an outline of the customer journey is provided, to illustrate the path that is taken when jobseekers engage with public employment services in Ireland. Detail is also provided on the main active labour market policies (ALMPs) that are available to support jobseekers, to provide greater qualitative information on the range of support and services that jobseekers can engage with. Third, the discussion moves to Tús and CE, where the history of the programmes is presented, their evolution over time is provided and this is contextualised in the broader objectives that they have. An overview of the previous evidence on the effectiveness of the CE scheme is also presented.
Delivery of support to jobseekers is conducted and co-ordinated by a range of stakeholders, but the principal actors are the public employment service (PES), Intreo, and the Department of Social Protection (DSP). DSP is Ireland’s ministry with responsibility for the operation of the PES and for implementation of ALMPs for jobseekers. Its main functions across the labour market include formulating policies and advising the government on legislation for employment services, the labour market, social protection and inclusion. This includes the design and development of effective income support policies, provision of employment services and information to its customers, alongside administering an effective regime to mitigate fraud and error in the social protection system. It aims to discharge these duties seamlessly working alongside the other departments, agencies and bodies with which it delivers services (DSP, 2022[1]).
The delivery of DSP’s labour market and income support services to jobseekers is conducted via Intreo, working with Intreo partners who deliver contracted-out employment services. Intreo provides income support while Intreo Employment Services and Intreo Partners provide a streamlined approach offering practical employment support and services. In 2021, there were 62 Intreo Centres spread across Ireland offering services to jobseekers and single parents. Intreo Centres employed around 300 dedicated employment counsellors (known as employment personal advisers and job coaches) and the objective is to increase this number to around 450 as part of its Pathways to Work 2021-25 strategy (DSP, 2021[2]). Contracted-out employment services will bring the total number of counsellors funded by DSP to around 1 000. By the end of 2021, 100 of the extra 150 case officers had been allocated (LMAC, 2022[3]).
3.2.1. The PES has centralised services and increased activation requirements over time
Intreo was introduced to bring together employment services and income support administration
The introduction of Intreo in 2012 was intended to simplify the pathway of support for jobseekers via the integration of previously disparate services relating to different aspects of labour market support. Before services were brought together, jobseekers had to interact with three separate agencies – the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP; now renamed DSP), the Community Welfare Service (CWS) and FÁS (the training and employment body now replaced by SOLAS) (Kelly et al., 2019[4]). Bringing these services together under one organisation decreased the number of contact points for customers and meant that services could be delivered in a more joined up manner.
The integration of benefit administration and employment services, replacing previously separate services, had been shown in other countries to bring economic benefits through increased efficiency (for example, the creation of Jobcentre Plus in the United Kingdom in 2002, see (Riley et al., 2011[5])). Indeed, Kelly et al. (2019[4]) find in their evaluation of the introduction of Intreo, a greater impact on the transition rate from the Live Register (the register dataset of open unemployment benefit claims) to “other” statuses, rather than into work. They attribute this to better early identification of invalid unemployment claims. They also found marginal improvements in exits to employment. The caveat with this research is the short time period (one year only) of post-reform data that the study considered. A study with a longer period of post-reform data would be beneficial to ascertain how these effects have bedded-in over time.
Intreo continued the previous activation regime but augmented it to introduce conditionality earlier in the unemployment spell
In 1997 Ireland introduced its first activation reforms, the National Employment Action Plans (NEAPs), but they had few activation requirements and were still too focused on passive income support (McGuinness et al. (2011[6]); Grubb, Singh and Tergeist (2009[7])). These reforms provided employment services but focused on targeting only certain groups of jobseekers. In the first instance, only jobseekers under 25 years old on the Live Register were subject to activation. This was then expanded to all individuals with over six months of unemployment, before this duration threshold was reduced to three months in 2006. Individuals in scope for activation were referred for a one-to-one counselling interview with a FÁS (Training and Employment Authority) Employment Services Officer. This included guidance and job search assistance and possible (voluntary) referral to an ALMP. If individuals did not attend this meeting, they would go back to their Social Welfare Local Office (DEASP operated centres where benefit administration was conducted), where a DEASP deciding officer would determine whether or not non-attendance was sanctionable and DEASP Job Facilitators could identify barriers to participation and explore other labour market entry routes. In practice, the intended regime was not consistently applied. Indeed, despite the presence of a regime where conditionality and sanctioning existed in principle, the lack of a stringent enforcement has been attributed by some researchers to the fact that attendance at job search assistance meetings were in fact associated with longer spells of unemployment (McGuinness, O’Connell and Kelly, 2019[8]). A lack of data sharing across organisations precluded effective tracking of a jobseeker through their claim period and fragmentation resulted in re-work and incorrect application of conditionality rules (Kelly et al., 2019[4]).
The introduction of Intreo came as part of a package of measures agreed with the EU and IMF in response to the rapid rise in unemployment following the global financial crisis in 2008. This package aimed to increase job search requirements, improve work incentives, and strengthen sanctions for non-compliance with job-search requirements. The new PES model was introduced in 2011 and its name changed to Intreo in 2012. Alongside the integration of services in this new “one stop shop”, activation for claimants began immediately (contrary to starting at month three of claim in the NEAPs) and was underpinned by a principle of mutual jobseeking obligations between jobseekers and the PES. The Intreo reforms formalised the agreements between jobseekers and the PES on what actions to take when looking for work, known as personal progression plans (PPP). PPPs were already available under the NEAP model but weakly enforced. The Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2010 signed into law reduced rates of pay for any jobseeker declining any type of PES intervention offered to them to assist re-entry to the labour market. This provided clearer guidelines on sanctionable offences and penalties for non-compliance. However, despite these reforms, overall activation requirements for unemployment insurance in Ireland still place it in the bottom quintile of strictness among OECD countries and it has become less strict over time relative to other OECD countries (Immervoll and Knotz, 2018[9]).
Improved case management processes enabled service differentiation
A new case management system in Intreo linked unemployment benefit payments to active engagement with jobseekers, to support them into employment or training. Because all activity relating to a jobseeker’s unemployment claim was now undertaken by Intreo, rather than by separate administration, advice and job seeking agencies, it meant that that a unified view of an individual’s case was possible. This allowed the end-to-end journey of an individual to be managed at the same time. One key aspect of the reform to employment services when Intreo was formed was the introduction of a profiling tool, intended to improve the targeting of ALMPs (see Box 3.1). This tool was designed to predict the probability that an individual would become long-term unemployed and so allow greater resources to be focused on those with greater risk. Designing service provision in this manner helps to ensure equity of outcomes (by giving those with greater likely of future labour market disadvantage more support) but its effect on efficiency of government spending is ambiguous (it could be more or less efficient to focus spending on these individuals, depending on the relative change to their outcomes compared to other groups).
Intreo introduced the “PEX” (probability of exit) score in 2012 to predict the likelihood that a customer exits the Live Register of unemployment before 12 months. It is a tool for segmentation to focus finite resources and deliver more intensive support to customers at greater risk of long-term unemployment.
PEX was designed using a specially designed survey tested during a 13-week period in 2006 on new claimants on the Live Register (34 000 of whom remained in the final model calculations). The survey collected data on factors such as education, literacy/numeracy levels, health, access to transport, employment and unemployment history, and participation in ALMPs, such as CE. Survey data were combined with additional information from directly collected administrative data, such as location, marital status and spousal earnings.
Predictive models were split into male and female. Although many characteristics influenced risk similarly, married or separated females were less likely to leave the Live Register, alongside those whose spouse was a high earner, contrary to the male population. For those with a predicted probability of remaining on the Live Register above 80%, the model correctly predicted long-term unemployment for 83% of males and 85% of females.
Profiling problems: The “un-surveyed” population
Two problems arose with the use of a survey on new entrants for risk scoring. Incomplete compliance left some newly registered jobseekers without a PEX score, and other individuals were already on the Live Register and could not be surveyed. DSP attempted to remedy this by commissioning a model to be built utilising solely administrative data. This was designed to identify the factors associated with remaining on the Live Register for 12 months (in contrast to the PEX score which looks at the probability of exiting prior to 12 months), as a measure of “labour market disadvantage”. In this way, DSP had some similar information that could be used to triage support for those jobseekers that had not answered a survey.
2022 update to the PEX model
Although original guidance suggested updates every three years, the first formal update of the model was published in 2022, utilising a sample of jobseekers from 2018. The models remained relatively stable over time. However, in the 2022 update older workers were less likely to exit the Live Register and marital status was no longer an important factor for females, but access to own transport was.
A decomposition analysis on the updated model identified that just eight profiling questions together accounted for 85% of the variance in the data. In order of importance, they were (1) claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JA); (2) recent employment history; (3) education; (4) self-perceived health; (5) a history of long-term unemployment; (6) having previously been on the CE scheme; (7) having access to own transport; and (8) age. The performance of the PEX model was very similar using only this subset of questions, compared to one based on all the data.
Source: O’Connell et al. (2009[10]), National Profiling of the Unemployed in Ireland, https://www.esri.ie/system/files/publications/RS10.pdf; McGuinness et al. (2022[11]), Predicting The Probability Of Long-Term Unemployment And Recalibrating Ireland’s Statistical Profiling Model, https://www.esri.ie/system/files/publications/RS149_0.pdf; McGuinness, Kelly and Walsh (2014[12]), Predicting the Probability of Long-Term Unemployment in Ireland Using Administrative Data, https://www.esri.ie/publications/predicting-the-probability-of-long-term-unemployment-in-ireland-using-administrative-0.
Intreo has continued to modernise systems and service based around harnessing digitisation
In 2021 a review was initiated by Intreo regional operations (centralised DSP teams with regional oversight of local offices) tasked with evaluating the structure of regional operations. The first phase of the review gathered insight from over 450 staff members in local offices and in the regional management teams. The review recognised that the original service model for Intreo was not sustainable in the future. The original service model was based around locally accessed paper records for customers. This created localised and independent geographic centres, where all operations pertaining to a client had to be undertaken by the local office where the paper records were held. This meant that specialisation across services was not possible, as local managers were required to cover all services. For example, administrative tasks could not be completed by a centralised team specialising in only this task because these tasks had to be carried out by local staff in the office at which the client’s paper records were held.
The outcome of this review was the creation of a new operating model harnessing the power of digitalisation to increase specialisation of team functions, which commenced in January 2022. Larger functional teams are envisaged, managed by specialist managers. By using digital records, it means that localised processing of paper records will no longer be required. Specialist centralised teams will be able to process similar tasks relating to jobseekers across the entire country and tasks will not be dependent on access to physical records housed in local offices. Instead, tasks can be carried out remotely by the newly created specialised team. This will allow these teams to work with larger volumes of cases, spread across larger geographical areas. The vision is that this specialisation will also increase consistency of decision-making and service provision across the organisation as there will be less scope for local interpretation and divergence, as all similar tasks will be completed by specialist teams.
The new organisation will introduce standardisation of regional reporting, using digital records, which it is hoped will increase accuracy and allow better evaluation of and improvement to local service provision (DSP, 2022[1]).
3.2.2. Customer journeys are tailored to long-term unemployment risk
Table 3.1 provides an illustrative overview of the customer journey that individuals take when applying for unemployment benefits, to show the common service elements and those that are specific to different groups of jobseekers. Service offerings are dependent on PEX scores to profile individual risk of long-term unemployment.
When a customer makes a claim for unemployment benefits, they do so in an Intreo office (or via the available online portal, Mywelfare.ie). At this stage, they complete the PEX statistical profiling model which enables the triage of services offered to jobseekers. Individuals are grouped into whether they have a low, medium, or high probability of leaving unemployment prior to 12 months.
After the PEX score has been computed, the next stage is to offer jobseekers a group information session (GIS), which is conducted at local Intreo offices. Approximately 30 people are invited to each GIS, which is undertaken with the intention of achieving a minimum of 20 attendees. On their first day, claimants are also given information about the support that they will receive from the DSP, their role in the PES activation process and what will happen if they do not actively engage with the DSP (Kelly et al., 2019[4])
After attendance at the GIS, claimants will have different levels of contact with EPAs/JCs dependent on the result of their PEX score and age. Table 3.1 shows the prescribed service levels that the risk profiling brings. For individuals with a low probability of finding employment, a meeting with an Intreo case officer is intended monthly (or more frequently for people under 30), for those with a medium probability of employment within 12 months a meeting with a case officer is prescribed every two months, whilst the most likely to find employment receive their first meeting at month six and then proceed with meetings every two months thereafter. However, whilst this is the intended policy regime, it is difficult to know in practice how rigidly these rules are adhered to by different Intreo offices. Having a set of internal monitoring metrics, to allow DSP to monitor how closely Intreo offices follow this policy regime is important in ensuring that individuals in different geographies can access the same level of support and will also allow better insight into how any policy variation may affect individual job finding rates.
After 12 months of unemployment, the service offering reverts to a unified offering for all jobseekers. At this stage, the customers are predominantly referred to Intreo partners, an external provision that DSP has procured. This can include contact with a range of contracted-out service providers or direct employment via one of the available public employment programmes. More details on schemes are provided in the following section.
3.2.3. Ireland’s ALMP spending is heavily focused on direct job creation
The objective of ALMPs is to improve the labour market integration of people – usually unemployed and underemployed people but extending also to people who have left the labour force and to groups distant from the labour market. For Ireland, expenditure on ALMPs is concentrated on the provision of public works for the long-term unemployed. However, ALMPs may also target those in employment, such as people who have low-skills and low-wage workers, younger and older workers. Examples of this kind of support in Ireland, for individuals with some kind of existing work, are described below.
ALMPs can take many different forms: some are focused on the supply side of the labour market, others on the demand side, while yet others are intended to improve the quality of matching of labour supply with demand. Beyond the job search assistance and monitoring that is a part of any reciprocal nature of jobseeker payments, the referral of jobseekers to other ALMPs is an acknowledgment of the need to broaden the effort to find employment, with programmes offering training or education, experience in a workplace, or skills or support with self-employment. Indeed, despite its relative focus on public works jobs, Ireland provides a range of ALMPs targeting these different needs.
The majority of ALMPs in Ireland become available to PES clients only after they reach one year of unemployment and two of its largest ALMPs are public works jobs schemes. Indeed, a large proportion (50%) of Ireland’s spending on ALMPs is on direct job creation. Figure 3.1 shows that in 2021, Ireland spent 0.21% of its GDP (or 0.37% of the modified GNI) on ALMPs, less than half of the average across 33 OECD countries (0.43%). However, despite the relatively lower overall level of spending, it was the 7th highest spending country on direct job creation as a percentage of GDP (0.10%). Ireland’s high spending on direct job creation, both as a proportion of GDP and as a proportion of total ALMP spending, relative to other OECD countries, is something that has persisted over the past two decades or so.
ALMP: Active labour market policies; PES: Public employment service.
Note: Sheltered and supported employment and rehabilitation in Denmark continues to 1.66%. OECD is an unweighted average of the 340 countries shown. Employment incentives exclude category 4.2 (Employment maintenance incentives), to remove as much as possible measures that are specific to COVID-19. Data refer to 2020 for Italy.
Source: OECD (n.d.[13]), OECD dataset: Public expenditure and participant stocks on LMP, http://stats.oecd.org//Index.aspx?QueryId=28935.
The emphasis on direct job creation in Ireland’s overall ALMP spending is observed in the participant numbers of its two large public employment schemes, CE and Tús (Figure 3.2). Since 2004 CE has averaged around 23 000 active participants per year. This figure has been augmented by an extra 7 000 active Tús participants per year since the latter’s introduction in 2011. By contrast, the two largest training offers, the Back to Education Allowance and the Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme, averaged only around 17 000 annual participants (58% of the combined CE and Tús participant volumes), despite having a much wider pool of potential participants. Both training schemes are open to all jobseekers regardless of their unemployment duration, whereas CE and Tús require jobseekers to have been registered with Intreo for at least a year. JobBridge is no longer operational, but ran across the period 2011-15, the timeframe in which the analysis later in this report takes place.
Note: ALMPs: Active labour market policies; BTWEA: Back to Work Enterprise Allowance, BTEA: Back to Education Allowance, CE: Community Employment, VTOS: Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme, PTJI: Part-Time Job Incentive, STEA: Short-Term Enterprise Allowance. Data for VTOS are unreliable pre-2018.
Source: Central Statistics Office (n.d.[14]), CSO.ie Live Register Activation Programmes, https://data.cso.ie/table/LRM14.
When considering the range of ALMPs offered in Ireland, it is worth placing them in the context of the range of supports that cater for individuals who blend some degree of work and income support, which is of particular relevance to Chapter 5.
Jobseekers can work for up to three in seven days and continue to receive a jobseeker’s payment in respect of the remaining days (casual claims). Other DSP schemes offer some support to families where a long-term unemployed person is returning to work, to people who are exiting long-term unemployment to self-employment, and to families where earnings from employment fall below a certain threshold (determined by family size).
In the case of start-up supports, the income support continues in the initial period of self-employment, in recognition of the challenge of moving from long-term unemployment to self-employment. In the other cases, there is some degree of employment but the days of employment, or the earnings from employment, fall below a certain threshold, or leading to an entitlement to some form of support. These supports are described below:
Part-time Job Incentive: The Part-Time Job Incentive (PTJI) Scheme allows certain people getting Jobseeker’s Allowance (JA) to take up part-time work and get a special weekly allowance instead of their jobseeker’s payment. For people who work for less than 24 hours per week and have been unemployed for at least 15 months, it is intended to be a steppingstone to full-time work.
Back to Work Family Dividend: The Back to Work Family Dividend (BTWFD) helps families to move from social welfare into employment. It gives financial support to people with children who stop claiming a jobseeker’s payment or a One-Parent Family Payment because they are in work or start work. Work includes employment or self-employment. BTWFD is paid for up to two years. To qualify for BTWFD, claimants and all family members must sign off all primary social welfare payments.
Back to Work Enterprise Allowance: The Back to Work Enterprise Allowance (BTWEA) scheme encourages people getting certain social welfare payments to become self-employed. Those who take part in the BTWEA scheme can keep a percentage of their social welfare payment for up to two years.
Short Term Enterprise Allowance: A similar scheme is targeted at short-term unemployed people in receipt of Jobseeker’s Benefit, providing support to people who have lost their job and want to start a business. In addition to income support (a weekly payment), individuals can also get financial support with the costs of setting up a business.
Working Family Payment: Working Family Payment (WFP) is a weekly tax-free payment for employees with children. It supports people who are on low pay and work at least 38 hours per fortnight.
Alongside these blended supports, a brief overview of the ALMPs and employment services offered by DSP is now provided for further context ahead of the sequence analysis conducted in Chapter 5. A fuller exposition of Tús and CE is presented in sections 3.3 and 3.4, to provide background the individual evaluation of these schemes in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7:
CE – part-time (19.5 hours per week) and temporary (one year) placements in jobs in local communities for long-term jobseekers and other eligible groups. To qualify for CE, jobseekers must have been getting qualifying social welfare payments for 12 months or more. Participants can undertake repeat placements up to certain limits. More details are given on eligibility in Section 3.4
Tús – a community work placement providing one year working opportunities for unemployed people. One year limit, contrary to the longer limit in CE. The work is designed to help the community, and it is with community and voluntary organisations. To qualify for Tús individuals must have been continuously unemployed for 12 months, and currently be getting a Jobseeker’s Allowance payment, or be in receipt of a Jobseeker’s Transitional payment (JST). No qualifying period applies for JST.
Back to Education Allowance (BTEA) – programmes of full-time educational courses (at 2nd or 3rd level) to get qualifications that will help individuals to find a job. To qualify for Back to Education Allowance, individuals must be: recommended by a case officer, meet the age criteria (usually over 21, or 24 for masters level courses), be in receipt of certain social welfare payments; and accepted onto a qualifying course.
JobsPlus – a payment to encourage employers to employ jobseekers who have been unemployed for 12 months or more and who satisfy certain conditions. These payments are either EUR 7 500 or EUR 10 000 and Intreo pays employers directly.
JobBridge – a national internship scheme (no longer in operation) for individuals on the Live Register for over three months offering an additional subsidy on their unemployment benefit for participation. Employers must not have made any redundancies in the previous three months.
JobPath – contracted employment services programme (no longer in operation) to help long-term unemployed find employment. Two companies – Seetec and Turas Nua – ran the contracts. DSP selected clients on a random basis and referred them to JobPath. Jobseekers were assigned a personal advisor who met with them regularly to help them develop a PP and, provide training guidance and job finding support. Support continued for 3-12 months post-employment.
DSP has broad objectives on the promotion of active participation and inclusion in society through the provision of income supports, employment and other services. Its rolling national employment services strategy, Pathways to Work, envisages a continuous programme of formal analytical evaluations of its programmes to support these objectives.
Certain interventions will be of more relevance to particular cohorts given their starting circumstances, such as an education or skills deficits or a lack of recent employment experience, but the objective of the programme of formal evaluations under Pathways to Work is to add evidence on the measured impact of the intervention as well as which ALMPs work best for specific cohorts. With sufficient evidence of programme impact, the PES can not only provide the range of ALMPs but also advise based on the employment trajectories of jobseekers with similar characteristics.
Pathways to Work reviews how governance, reporting and generation of evidence support DSP’s objectives. The results of this strategy are designed to feed into evidence-based policy decisions and improvements to the programmes and services offered to jobseekers.
Pathways to Work 2016-20 saw a number of programme evaluations completed
Between 2015 and 2020 evaluations were completed on several of Ireland’s ALMPs. Reports were published on BTEA, JobBridge, BTWEA, Intreo (looking at the functioning of the PES service as a whole), JobPath and JobsPlus during this period.
These evaluations all made use of Ireland’s extensive administrative micro-data to utilise quasi-experimental techniques such as propensity score matching, difference-in-difference and sequence analysis. These techniques enabled robust counterfactual estimates of programme impacts to identify causal impacts.
Pathways to Work 2021-25 reviews progress and updates the evaluation work programme
Having taken stock of the evaluations conducted in the previous cycle of its employment strategy, the current Pathways to Work cycle focuses on CE as being the initial priority for evaluation due to its importance in the suite of Irish ALMPs and the relatively long period since a counterfactual impact evaluation for the programme was last conducted (in 2000). External expert advice on the evaluations is provided by the evaluation sub-group of Ireland’s Labour Market Advisory Council (LMAC).
In addition, twice-yearly customer surveys will be extended to encompass all external service providers to provide detailed feedback on client satisfaction and aid the review of services to jobseekers (having previously been implemented in the last cycle for Intreo and JobPath clients).
This will sit alongside the quarterly reporting of key performance indicators and an annual review and report on the progress of all the commitments made in the Pathways to Work strategy. A breakpoint to review and refresh the strategy was introduced for 2023 and an audit on DSP administrative data comprehensiveness, consistency, reliability and range scheduled to facilitate longitudinal analysis of outcomes.
Note: For information on the LMAC can be found at: www.gov.ie/en/publication/656a27-labour-market-advisory-council/; DSP evaluations are listed here: www.gov.ie/en/organisation-information/5683a-labour-market-analytics/#evaluations.
Source: Cronin et al. (2019[15]), JobsPlus evaluation. Technical report, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/986782; Cronin, Hardiman and Judge (2017[16]), Back To Work Enterprise Allowance – a counterfactual impact evaluation (Working paper); DEASP (2019[17]), Evaluation of JobPath outcomes for Q1 2016 participants, https://www.gov.ie/ga/foilsiuchan/0939ba-working-paper-evaluation-of-jobpath-outcomes-for-q1-2016-participant/; Indecon International Research Economists (2016[18]), Indecon Evaluation of JobBridge Activation Programme; Kelly et al. (2019[4]), An initial evaluation of the effectiveness of Intreo activation reforms, Research Series, No. 81, https://doi.org/10.26504/rs81; Kelly, McGuiness and Walsh (2015[19]), An evaluation of the Back to Education Allowance. https://www.esri.ie/system/files/publications/RS47.pdf.
The public works programme Tús was launched in December 2010 and became operational in 2011, to provide short-term employment opportunities, and thus income, to beneficiaries while delivering a service that is of value to society. This was in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, where the unemployment rate in Ireland increased from 4.9% at the end of 2007 to 14.5% at the end of 2012. Prior to the official launch of Tús, at the end of November 2010, the number of registered unemployed of at least one year’s duration stood at over 150 000.
3.3.1. Tús has a dual objective of supporting jobseekers and managing the numbers on the Live Register
Tús has dual objectives of providing opportunities to long-term unemployed people to re-engage with the labour market and to manage the number of long-term jobseekers on the Live Register, which is Ireland’s unemployment register.
Tús aims to provide people with employment related experience to re-enter the labour market. It also aims to boost a person’s motivation and confidence and offer them opportunities to experience different work environments.1 While there is no requirement for participants to engage in job search while on Tús, a key element of the engagement is to identify other work, training and education opportunities. While on Tús, participants can take up other employment and are supported to do this, provided any such work does not interfere with their Tús commitments. Participants may terminate their engagement on Tús at any time to take up full-time work, training and education opportunities once they do not return to the Live Register.
It is a stated objective of Tús that it will contribute to the management of the Live Register. Participants are randomly selected from the Live Register and Live Register sanctions may apply to those who do not avail of an offer of placements. In this way, Tús contributes to the organisation of the Live Register in identifying those who are unemployed but may not be available for, or actively seeking, work.
Eligibility is open to people on the Live Register (that is, who have been unemployed) for at least 12 months and in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance (JA). Not all of those who are on the Live Register will be eligible for referral to Tús. People signing for credited contributions are not in receipt of a jobseeker payment and are not eligible. Similarly, people who are in part-time employment but are receiving a partial jobseeker payment are not eligible.
Tús placements are delivered and managed at local level
The network of development companies responsible for the administration of Tús are collectively known as the Implementing Bodies (IBs). These are local development companies, or Údarás na Gaeltachta in the case of the delivery and management of the initiative in Gaeltacht areas. Each IB is awarded a specific quota of Tús placements at both supervisory and participant level, based on the distribution of registered unemployed in the area.
The IBs manage the day-to-day implementation of Tús and the supervision of participants on behalf of DSP. They are also responsible for advertising and promoting the initiative and identifying suitable work placements and community groups in their respective geographical locations. IBs are responsible for evaluating and selecting organisations to provide work opportunities. Pobal operates a payroll function on behalf of the Department of Social Protection.
3.3.2. There is a randomisation element in the selection but less so in Tús participation
DSP randomly selects a subsample among individuals meeting the eligibility criteria outlined above. Once selected, the DSP writes to each person, offering them the opportunity to be considered for a work placement opportunity in Tús and requesting their consent to have their contact details shared with the IB operating in their area should they agree to participate. Those agreeing to participate and to having their contact details shared with the IB are then referred to the relevant IB.
The IB will then contact the potential participant and invite them for an initial assessment interview to determine their interest, work and educational background and other relevant facts in order to attempt to find a suitable work placement. Failure to participate in the Tús scheme for reasons other than the taking up of full-time employment or education, may be penalised by being disqualified from receiving a Jobseeker’s Allowance payment for up to nine weeks under the provisions of Section 147(4) of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005.
3.3.3. On average there are around 7 000 Tús participants at any one time
When Tús was introduced in 2011, up to 5 000 placements were initially announced. As part of the 2013 Budget package an additional 2 500 placements were announced in line with the commitments set out in the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work. Table 3.2 below details the scale of the Tús programme since its introduction and throughout the analysis period 2011-18.
Tús participants receive a monthly payment equivalent to their existing jobseeker payment plus a top-up. The amount of the top-up increased from EUR 20 when the programme was launched in 2011 to EUR 22.50 in 2016. Since January 2023 the top-up amount has increased to EUR 27.50. Table 3.2 also captures the weekly payment rates (personal rates) for Tús participants, the additional amounts received for any eligible dependents in the household (qualified child and adult allowances), and the total expenditure associated with the scheme.
Participants work 19.5 hours per week and hours of attendance may be spread across the day, including evenings and Saturdays, to meet work requirements.
The Tús placements are set at a maximum of 12-months’ duration to allow those who have become distanced from the labour market to avail of short-term quality work placements and break the cycle of unemployment. Participants are required to complete the full 52 weeks unless they wish to take up an offer of full-time employment, education, or training. Contracts cannot be renewed or extended. Having completed a 52-week placement on Tús, a participant cannot subsequently participate on Tús for a minimum of three years.
3.3.4. Tús placements are community-based delivered by not-for-profit enterprises
Organisations providing Tús placements are community-based. In general, all work undertaken, and services delivered by the community and voluntary sectors for the benefit of the community or specific sectors can be considered eligible as Tús work opportunities.
More specifically, organisations wishing to work with IBs must meet the following criteria:
Have a recognised informal (parish or community committee, trade, sporting, cultural or other association) or formal or legal structure (a company limited by guarantee, not-for-profit co-operative or friendly society where profits or surpluses are not distributed to members).
Demonstrate a track record of working with or providing services to and within their communities.
Demonstrate a capability of managing a participant in a placement with the supervisory support of the Implementing Body.
Community organisations engaged in the provision of local services with the support of other publicly supported programmes such as the Community Services Programme, Community Employment Scheme, Jobs Initiative or the Rural Social Scheme and voluntary organisations funded by the Health Services Executive are considered eligible insofar as the placements do not displace or substitute employment supported under relevant programmes. Additionally, Citizens Information Centres and Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) are eligible.
Public bodies and commercial entities are not eligible to offer Tús placements. The broad categories of organisations not suitable to offer Tús placements include:
CE was introduced in 1994, also at a time of high long-term unemployment and had a dual emphasis on provision of opportunity for the long-term unemployed to find work in addition to acting as a resource for local communities (DEASP, 2021[21]). CE provides part-time, temporary paid employment to people who are long-term unemployed. The extra material here provides context for the detailed quantitative assessment of the programme that comes later in this report and is particularly relevant given its long history as Ireland’s main ALMP.
CE aims to provide participants with work experience, training, and personal development opportunities to help them gain the skills and confidence needed to secure permanent employment. CE schemes are run by local community and voluntary organisations, and the participants‘ wages are funded by the government. CE placements are typically managed on an annual basis, with participants able to renew placements subject to continuing eligibility and placement needs.
Expenditure on CE has remained relatively consistent over time, averaging EUR 350 million per annum from 2011-18 (Table 3.3), despite large changes to the number of long-term unemployed over this same period. This consistency in expenditure is driven largely by consistent recipient numbers, as the rates for CE were frozen in nominal terms between 2011 and 2015.
3.4.1. Sponsors, supervisors and DSP officers interact to deliver CE placements
The implementation of CE has remained fairly stable since the scheme’s inception. DSP provides funding for sponsor organisations to employ participants. Supervisors within these organisations are responsible for the management of participants and for ensuring that the scheme is properly administered. DSP staff work with both sponsor’s management teams and supervisors to ensure smooth operation of the scheme.
CE sponsors apply to DSP for places and employ participants
CE sponsors are the organisations for which the CE participants work. Sponsors must be non-profit and non-commercial organisations. Criteria for acceptance to become a CE sponsor include the ability to provide work experience or skills that are transferable to the open labour market; having the capacity to provide development and training geared towards job readiness; and the capacity to administer financial and non-financial records for the scheme. Sponsors are a mixture of voluntary community bodies, local authorities or schools. Voluntary bodies make up the bulk of this group, comprising around 95% of all sponsors (including community groups, which entered the classification in 2017 and replaced some of those previously listed as a voluntary body).
Each sponsor has to convene a project management committee, consisting of a Chairperson, Secretary, Treasurer and at least two ordinary members to run the affairs of the sponsor project in compliance with the rules laid down by DSP. One of these members must be nominated the Participant Development Officer (PDO). The PDO’s role is to be responsible for participant development at the Committee level, engaging with the scheme supervisor to ensure that participants’ Individual Learner Plans (ILP) are completed and up-to-date and training is undertaken by participants. They are also the point of liaison with DSP staff on all such matters. CE Sponsors receive funding from DSP for four main areas: participant allowances, supervisor costs, material costs, participant training. In 2014 allowances to participants made up 77% of the budget, supervisor costs 15%, materials 4% and training 2%. As of December 2021, there were 849 CE schemes, supporting 19 240 CE participants (DSP, 2022[1]). This represents an average of 22.7 participants per scheme and has increased since the 1990s, where there were around 14 participants per scheme (Deloitte & Touche, 1998[22]).
CE supervisors are employed by sponsors to manage participants
CE supervisors are employed directly by the CE sponsors, though the funding for their post is also paid for by DSP. There is usually one supervisor per scheme, unless the scheme participants rise above (circa) 25. With over 25 participants it is possible, with agreement from DSP, for the scheme to hire an assistant supervisor. Supervisor roles are advertised in the open labour market, but in practice many supervisors have previously been participants in CE, with their experience of the scheme providing them with a first-hand insight into work undertaken by participants.
Supervisor contracts are governed by guidance laid down by DSP. The contracts are full-time, for 39 hours per week (excluding lunch breaks). The duration of the contract is decided upon by the CE sponsor and the supervisor, but funding from DSP is guaranteed only for the duration of the CE agreement between DSP and sponsor organisation. Supervisors are excluded from Section 9 provision of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003, which means that contracts cannot be of indefinite duration. It is stipulated that job performance reviews must be completed at months three, six and nine for new (assistant) supervisors. Wages for supervisors are determined by scales set by DSP and depend on the number of participants that supervisors are responsible for (fewer than 15, or 15 and above) and how many years of experience a supervisor has (on a 4-point scale, which is incremented annually for each year of service). For example, in 2023 a supervisor with fewer than 15 participants would earn a weekly salary of EUR 524 on point 1 of the experience scale and EUR 696 on point 4 of the scale (these amounts would by EUR 710 and EUR 859 respectively for supervisors with 15 or more participants) (DSP, 2023[23])
A supervisor’s role is to manage the training and development, pastoral and administrative details for the participants in their scheme. For instance, they have the responsibility of ensuring that all participants in their scheme have an up-to-date ILP. In practice this means developing an ongoing relationship to guide and mentor participants through the CE scheme, in addition with preparing them for the labour market after CE participation. CE supervisors will meet regularly – usually weekly or fortnightly – with their participants, though this can be more frequent and ad hoc, as the particular scheme, supervisor and participant dictate.
Community Development Officers provide the bridge between DSP and CE sponsors
Community Development Officers are DSP staff members who act as co-ordinators and manage the relationships with CE scheme sponsors. This can range from renewal of contracts to run CE schemes, approving additional job placements in a scheme and managing training and materials costs with the scheme. Community Development Officers are responsible for a geographical area and manage the related CE schemes in that area.
3.4.2. CE eligibility is dependent on individual characteristics
The programme is open to individuals who are over 21 years old and in receipt of certain social welfare payments for 12 months or more. There are a number of qualifying welfare payments, relating to different individual statuses. The main routes for eligibility are receipt of Jobseekers Allowance (social assistance), Jobseekers Benefit (unemployment insurance) and One-Parent Family Payment (lone parent benefits). In December 2014 recipients of these benefits accounted for 87.6% of all participants (DSP, 2015[24]).
There is a lifetime participation limit which caps the maximum number of permitted years of participation. This is six years up to State Pension Age, or seven years for those with a qualifying disability-linked Social Welfare Payment. For individuals that enter the scheme after the age of 62, no limit to participation applies, allowing them to continue to retirement age. All participation prior to 2007 is disregarded for these limits.
Eligibility for CE has changed over the years, using some combination of length of receipt of qualifying benefits and age of participant. For example, prior to 2017 individuals aged under 55 had a lifetime participation limit of three years, those aged from 55-65 years had a limit of six years and all participation before the year 2000 was disregarded. The lower age limit for participants at this point was 25.
Some specific types of CE schemes target different client groups
Alongside the core offering of CE schemes, there are three specifically designed scheme types to cater for different client groups:
Childcare Programme – In this scheme participants work in childcare services and work towards accreditation as an approved childcare assistant. The genesis of this scheme was geared particularly towards lone parents, so that they could easily combine their own childcare needs with a job in the sector.
Health and Social Care Programme – This scheme was introduced following a review which recommended strengthening defined progression pathway for CE participants. CE Sponsors are organisations in the disability and care sector and participants undertake training to become carers in the social care sector.
Drug Rehabilitation Programme – A dedicated programme to help those participants recovering from substance misuse. There is a much greater emphasis placed on these schemes to link in with local ancillary services, to support the participants as they recover from addiction.
In 2015, out of around 23 000 total available CE places there were 2 200 ring-fenced places for Childcare, 2 800 for Health and Social Care and 1 000 for Drug Rehabilitation (DSP, 2015[24]). Due to the difficulty in the analysis of the Drug Rehabilitation programme, this programme is not included in the subsequent quantitative analysis later in the report.
3.4.3. Training is a core component of CE
A key difference in CE, breaking with the Social Employment Scheme that it replaced, was the incorporation from the outset of training provision. CE was intentionally designed as an integrated training and employment programme. This design made it clear that the scheme was to be primarily a labour market scheme and only secondarily a community development scheme (Grubb, Singh and Tergeist, 2009[7]).
Training is managed at an individual level using the ILPs, which record the agreement made by the CE participant and the sponsoring organisation. These plans are reported to DSP for monitoring purposes and managed through the relationship with the CDO, scheme supervisors and the PDO committee member.
A dedicated training budget is available for participants annually, though the amount per person has reduced substantially in both nominal and real terms over time. At the inception of CE in 1994, a budget equivalent to EUR 300 was available annually to spend on participants. However, at the 2012 Budget, training allowances were reduced by two-thirds and although some of this was restored the following year, the per person budget was only increased back to just EUR 250, where it remains now. In 2022, this is equivalent to a 55% real terms reduction in training budget per person compared to the amount at scheme inception.
Given the small budgets available, the majority of training within CE takes place on small-scale modular level. In 2014, “minor” training awards- which can be standalone or modular elements of “major” awards (usually contributing 15 credits towards a major award requiring 120 credits)- comprise over 96% of training taken in courses recognised by Ireland’s national education awarding body, FETAC. There were some 16 779 of these minor awards, in contrast to just 280 major awards. A further 22 230 training courses were completed which fell outside of the scope of FETAC and were largely focussed on mandatory training like health and safety and employment skills (DSP, 2015[24]). Chapter 4 provides a more extensive review of CE training utilising the administrative data available in this report.
Increasing training budgets, allowing more scope for discretionary extra training budgets for individual cases, or aggregation of funding between participants would permit more individuals to undertake recognised major training awards and to build the skills necessary on their CV to unlock more jobs in the open labour market. Considering the mode of training, particularly with reference to greater online or virtual training, may also provide a means to more value-for-money training provision, that could facilitate greater skills accumulation, even in the absence of increased budget.
3.4.4. Over the years the scale and objectives of CE have been debated and augmented
As long-term unemployment fell from its highs of the mid-1990s, it precipitated debate as to the appropriate number of participants for the CE scheme, as private sector employment opportunities increased and concerns over the lock-in effects of CE increased. As early as 1998, an evaluation suggested that CE be reduced by around 6 000-8 000 places, from its level at the time of 41 000 participants (Deloitte & Touche, 1998[22]). This represented some 3% of total employment in the Irish economy at the time, which promoted an expansion of the community and voluntary sector. Following the earlier recommendations, CE fell from around 40 000 participants in 1998 to around 20 000 in 2003 (Grubb, Singh and Tergeist, 2009[7]), a level of which it has hovered around for the last 20 years or so. After the adjustments made following the earlier advice, there was remarkable stability of participant levels over time, even in the face of rapidly changing long-term unemployment levels (see Chapter 2 for details). This, alongside emerging evidence on the efficacy of public employment schemes relative to other ALMPs (Card, Kluve and Weber, 2018[25]) led to a further review of the placement of CE within the suite of ALMP provision in Ireland.
DSP published a review in 2015, which recommended several alterations to the scheme (DSP, 2015[24]). These included linking the number of CE places to changes in the Live Register. Given the stability of CE participant levels and the corresponding fall in the Live Register (both all Live Register claims and those open for more than one year), it does not appear this recommendation has been fully implemented. This recommendation goes to the heart of the problem of operating a scheme with dual objectives as a tool for labour market integration on the one hand and a means to provide local services on the other. What makes sense from a labour market perspective (reducing scheme numbers as private-sector employment opportunities open up) is less obvious from a provision of local services perspective (whereby the effective funding of third-sector organisation labour would be removed via reductions in CE numbers and would need to be found elsewhere).
A dual strand approach was implemented to separate out CE disparate objectives
The DSP review (DSP, 2015[24]) grappled directly with this thorny issue of dual CE objectives, by proposing distinct “activation” and “social inclusion” strands within CE. Distinctions were made in the report between the expected proportion of individuals finding a job following a social inclusion placement (20%) and those following an activation placement (50%). The review was careful to detail that it was expected that CE placements that were defined as social inclusion or activation, rather than participants themselves. This was to avoid stigmatism of participants. However, it is a troublesome logical stance to take. It is individuals that find jobs. It was also historic job finding rates of specific groups of individuals that the report documented when proposing its strand targets. Furthermore, suggested eligibility for individuals for the two strands was based around an individual’s PEX score – their personalised risk score of becoming long-term unemployed. It seems difficult to reconcile the concept of the strands being defined around job roles when all of the dynamics sitting underneath them are inherently based around individuals.
The practical implementation of placement strands, following the evaluation, also gives some clues as to the difficulty of prescribing this distinction to job roles, and then to its underlying credibility once made. The report proposed that the distribution of the two strands was 34% activation and 66% social inclusion (DSP, 2015[24]). However, after its implementation these proportions have been inverted, with the activation strand accounting for 66% of places and the social inclusion strand accounting for 34%. Such a wide swing in the relative proportions suggests the underlying fundamentals of such an approach are delicate at best. The recommendation (66% social inclusion roles) also provides a very stark illustration of the gradual morphing over time of CE, from a scheme designed primarily as a labour market support, to one where proposed changes move its main focus to be social inclusion.
To provide some supporting context on the peculiarities of the strand calculations, the estimation strategy used in DSP (2015[24]) to produce them is briefly discussed. The proportions in either activation or social inclusion were first estimated by sector. It was proposed that in the Childcare sector 65% of places would be in activation and in the Environment/Local Amenities sector 20% of places would be in activation. The realised employment rate after CE participation in both of those sectors was 24.8% and 24.4% respectively. So, despite large expected compositional differences in the make-up of CE jobs in those two sectors, almost no employment rate differences occurred prior to the strand distinction. The newly defined strands, alongside their expected employment rates (50% for activation and 20% for social inclusion) would imply a DSP employment rate target for Childcare CE of 39.5% and Environmental/Local Amenities CE of 26%, quite divorced from their previous realised employment rates. This feature was common across all sectors outlined in the report. Indeed, the recently published Inter-departmental report consultations found that stakeholders thought that activation and social inclusion were so intertwined it would be impossible to separate the two and 75% of respondents were in favour of every CE scheme having a mixture (DEASP, 2021[21]). With all of this in mind, it is hard to identify rational practical uses for the strand distinctions as they currently stand.
What can best be done to best manage this scheme with dual and divergent objectives?
An important step in the development of CE should be to take a step back in the policy making cycle, to define precisely what is meant by social inclusion. This should be absent of any link to outcomes related to individuals finding jobs (i.e. those related to activation not social inclusion). Once these objectives are precisely determined, then a set of metrics can be formulated upon which to measure them. For example, this may be as simple as metrics on whether local services are provided effectively by CE, be that in volume or via customer satisfaction metrics. It could focus on social cohesion, measured via local surveys or captured indirectly through, e.g. participation intensity with local community groups. But whatever these objectives are, they need to be explicit; to be about social inclusion not activation; and they need the correct information captured to ensure their proper measurement. Until that is done, it is likely that opaque debate will continue that is largely masked by and conflated with labour market outcomes. When complete, it will then facilitate the correct debate as to whether CE is the correct vehicle to drive both of these ambitions forward and whether any modifications are necessary in order to help it achieve them.
3.4.5. Previous analysis of CE has found mixed evidence of labour market links
Despite the international evidence that public works schemes have negligible effects on employment (Card, Kluve and Weber, 2018[25]), previous analysis of CE has provided some re-assurance of its beneficial labour market impacts. The first evaluation of CE suggested that employment rates for males were some 6.5 percentage points higher after CE participation, and 8 percentage points higher for females, in comparison to the control group of long-term unemployed individuals on the Labour Force Survey (Deloitte & Touche, 1998[22]). However, this study relied on quite small sample sizes of CE participants for estimation and a crude methodology to create a counterfactual group of non-participants. A later study (Denny, Harmon and O’Connell, 2000[26]), using different survey data for the control group population, failed to detect significant employment effects for men but estimated a 12 percentage points increase in female employment rates, although at marginal statistical significance levels. Given the changing nature of CE over time, particularly as it became to coalesce more around its social inclusion objective, as the broader Irish economy evolved and as ALMP provision in Ireland modernised and expanded, it is important to update these analyses to determine to what extent these findings are replicated in the present day. The use of rich, linked administrative data and more recent counterfactual impact evaluation offer the possibility of more precision in the estimates than was the case with these two earlier studies.
Ireland has modernised its PES over the years, with a welcome streamlining of administrative processes and an increased focus on support that aims to help its jobseekers connect with jobs. However, its ALMP spending is still focussed primarily on direct job creation schemes, which have a mixed reputation among ALMPs, due to their long lock-in effects on participation and weaker links to private sector jobs.
There is mixed evidence from previous studies of the CE scheme itself, including some which do not find any effects and others which report positive results (particularly for women). However, there have been no studies of the scheme in the recent past. There has been no evaluation of Tús since its introduction in mid-2011.
CE schemes themselves are integral to providing a range of support services across both urban and rural communities in Ireland and because of this their role has always been more than just as a tool for labour market activation. This has resulted in continued debate on how best scheme meets its social objectives alongside its labour market objectives. Updating the relatively old previous analysis to illustrate how CE continues to meet its labour market objectives will be important to informing its continual operation.
In the case of Tús, it is important to establish how the scheme is performing, after a decade of referrals of long-term registered unemployed (Live Register) individuals to the scheme. These aspects are the focus of later chapters in this report.
Alongside these employment-related considerations, it will be important for CE to consider exactly what its objectives for social inclusion and how best to monitor and record progress of them.
References
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