The Department of Social Protection has defended the record of the JobBridge scheme saying it has made significant progress.

The programme sees unemployed people take up internships while earning an extra €50 a week on top of their job seekers’ allowance.

Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy accused the government of massaging figures to mask unemployment and said it was manipulating the success rate of JobBridge.

“Rather than it being 38% of the full number of people who stared, it’s 38% of those who finished JobBridge” he said.

“The figure the government actually gave was 797 people…when they finished JobBridge ended up in full-time employment”.

“Of that 797 people, a minority – slightly less then 40% – got jobs with the companies they were doing internships with” he added.

But this afternoon the Department said that over 2,000 interns on the scheme have managed to get a job whether they finished it early or not.

And it said that of the 59% of early finishers nearly 40% of those left it early to take up a job.

Jobs Minister Richard Bruton says the claims from the Socialist Party are wrong.

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