The Labour Market Advisory Council Evaluation Sub-group

The Terms of Reference of the Labour Market Advisory Council (LMAC) provides that it will undertake specific functions with regard to evaluation and review activity: ‘providing the Minister for Social Protection with advice with regard to evaluation of policy and service effectiveness including contributing to the design of evaluation programmes, the interpretation of results and the identification of policy/service implications’.

The role of the Evaluation sub-group is to assist the Council’s work programme as set-out in its Terms of Reference, pursuant to a decision of the Council at its meeting of 18th December 2020. Specifically, this will be with regard to the evaluation of the impact, effectiveness and efficiency of measures implemented as part of the Pathways to Work strategy, and other active labour market programmes and policies.

Furthermore, the national employment services strategy – Pathways to Work, 2021-2025 – envisages the Department publishing a series of evaluations of selected Active Labour Market Programmes (ALMPs) over the lifetime of this strategy. The Evaluation sub-group will provide support to the LMAC and the Department in the completion of this work.

The Evaluation sub-group is a sub-group of the Council, and the sub-group Chair will report to the full Council on its work. The Evaluation sub-group comprises a number of members of the full Council in addition to co-opted experts who are not members but whose experience can usefully assist the sub-group in fulfilling its duties.

The Evaluation sub-group has the following functions:

• Providing advice to the LMAC and the Department on the selection of ALMPs to be included in the programme of evaluations under the Pathways to Work, 2021-2025 strategy.
• Providing advice to the LMAC and the Department on the selection of appropriate and rigorous methodologies, including counterfactual impact evaluations, when developing methodological frameworks for measuring the impact of an ALMP, including with regard to any draft Requests for Tender (RFT) [within the timeframe of the design process, prior to RFTs being issued by the Department].
• Participating in the selection of tenders by providing a member for each project evaluation committee, having agreed to the relevant security and confidentiality requirements.