Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 January 2016
10. Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection in what timeframe does she guarantee a quality offer of a job, further education and training or apprenticeship opportunity for young persons with a disability who present themselves to their local Intreo office. [1213/16]
View answerThis Government recognises the importance of increasing participation in employment on a voluntary basis for persons with a disability, including young persons. It is committed to removing any barriers that remain which prevent persons with disabilities from participating in activation programmes and employment. To this end, the Department provides a wide range of work related supports for people with disabilities. The principal support is the EmployAbility service, which provides job coach support to people with disabilities in accessing jobs in the open labour market, and the service currently supports over 3,000 people. Funding is also provided to AHEAD (Association for Higher Education Access and Disability) for the Willing Able Mentoring (WAM) programme, an employment placement programme for graduates with disabilities. Other supports include the provision of employment subsidies, workplace adaptation grants and specialist training courses that are specially designed for people with disabilities. These supports, which cost an estimated €37 million in 2015, play an important role in supporting increased participation in the labour force by people with disabilities. In addition people with disabilities have access to nearly all of the standard supports available to other jobseekers.
The Government’s commitments to facilitating increased participation in employment for people with disabilities are reflected in the Comprehensive Employment Strategy. A key part of this strategy will be the setting up an interdepartmental group, under an independent chair, to review and make recommendations on making work pay for people with disabilities through the examination of the complex interactions between the benefit system, the additional costs associated with work for people with disabilities and net income earnings from employment.
A young person with a disability is free to avail of the Intreo service, where a range of supports are available. Currently young people with disabilities presenting themselves at an Intreo Centre seeking employment supports are referred, without delay, to a Case Officer, or to the Local Employment Service (LES).
The Youth Guarantee is focused in accordance with the EU recommendation on the young unemployed in receipt of jobseekers payments, and involves the conditionality related to such payments in respect of job search activity, availability for work, and willingness to take up appropriate offers of employment, training or temporary employment programmes.
Although young people with disabilities have access to the Intreo services they are not, however, subject to the same conditionality in terms of a requirement to engage with those services. The employment supports in place for them are of a voluntary nature and are tailored to individual circumstances and a person’s capacity to engage with education, training or job-search programmes. No minimum timeframe in which an offer of a job, further education, training, or apprenticeship applies.
