Abstract Since the financial crisis, Ireland’s welfare state has been reorientated around a regulatory, ‘work-first’ activation model. Claimants now face penalty rates for non-compliance with activation requirements that have been significantly extended since 2009. Alongside these formal policy reforms, the organisations delivering Public Employment Services, and the modes by which they are commissioned, have also been reconfigured through a series of New Public Management style governance reforms, including, most notably, the creation of a quasi-market for employment services (JobPath) in 2015. This article addresses the intersection between activation and quasi-marketisation, positioning the latter as a form of ‘double activation’ that reshapes not only how but also what policies are enacted at the street level. It unpacks their shared logics and mutual commitment to governing agents at a distance through a behavioural public policy orientation, and reflects on the extent to which marketisation is capable of producing lower-cost but more responsive employment services.