Two leading trade union groups have staged a protest outside the Monaghan Town constituency office of the Minister for Social Protection, Heather Humphreys.
SIPTU and Fórsa members say the protest will highlight their "opposition to plans to privatise essential community services".
It's part of the "Our Community is Not for Sale" campaign, which seeks an "immediate halt" to a tendering process which it says allows private companies to bid for State contracts to run programmes that assist people in getting back into employment.
SIPTU say this could lead to the "wholesale privatisation of local employment services" if the tendering process proceeds as planned.
The organisation adds that it would "force out effective community-based, non-profit providers of local employment services".
Our reporter, Diarmuid Pepper, was at the protest and he spoke to John King, who is a Deputy General Secretary with SIPTU.
He outlined his concerns regarding the tendering process for local employment services, and you can hear from John by clicking on the above image:
Lynn Coffey is an Assistant General Secretary with Fórsa.
She says people who work in the sector "believe in it" and are passionate about their work and says they are in danger of becoming unemployed
Diarmuid also spoke to Bernard Fennessy, who runs a jobs club in Dun Laoghaire.
He said he was taking part in the protest in solidarity with the people who could be affected:
