Parliamentary Question addressed to the Minister for Social Protection

To ask the Minister for Social Protection if graduate nurses who have not applied for the two year contract jobs offered by the Health Service Executive will continue to qualify for jobseeker’s allowance in view of the requirement that qualification requires that they be genuinely seeking work; and if she will make a statement on the matter.

Reply

Minister for Social Protection (Joan Burton T.D):

Social welfare legislation provides that a person must satisfy the conditions of being available for and genuinely seeking work in order to be entitled to jobseeker’s benefit or jobseeker’s allowance. Any person who fails to satisfy these conditions is not entitled to a jobseeker’s payment.

The person must be available for suitable full time employment. In determining whether the person is available for suitable full time employment, the following factors are taken into account: the person’s skills, qualifications and experience; the length of time that the person has been unemployed; and the availability of job vacancies in the locality.

While failure to apply for a particular job for which a person is qualified could constitute a breach of the requirement to genuinely seek work, this would be determined having regard to the circumstances of a particular case and it cannot be stated that such a finding would automatically apply in respect of the scenario outlined.