Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 16 April 2019
257. Deputy Brendan Ryan asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the number or percentage of employees in her Department, and in the agencies under her aegis, with intellectual disabilities; her plans to increase this number to promote and support the employment of persons with intellectual disabilities as outlined in the Disability Act 2005; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [17480/19]
View answer258. Deputy Brendan Ryan asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation if her Department, and the agencies under her aegis, track the numbers of employees they have with an intellectual disability; her plans to do so in order to help set targets and increase workplace opportunities for those with intellectual disabilities such as those outlined in the national disability inclusion strategy; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [17497/19]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 257 and 258 together.
My Department, as a public service employer, has a legal obligation under the Disability Act 2005 to report each year on the number and percentage of employees with disabilities. Part 5 of the Act sets out the following obligations on Government Departments and public service bodies regarding the employment of people with disabilities:
- Public bodies must, insofar as practicable, take all reasonable measures to promote and support their employment of people with disabilities.
- Public bodies shall ensure, unless there are good reasons for not doing so, that at least 3% of their employees are people with disabilities.
- Public bodies must report on an annual basis to a statutory monitoring committee in their parent Department on the number of people with disabilities in their employment and the measures they are taking to promote and support their employment. The monitoring committees in turn submit their reports on such compliance to the Minister of their parent Department and the National Disability Authority (NDA).
To build an accurate record of the number of staff with disabilities, in accordance with the legal definition in the 2005 Act, every employee, whether or not they have any impairment or disability, is asked to complete a census form and return it, in confidence, to a nominated person. While public bodies have a statutory obligation to report, there is no obligation on employees to disclose if they have a disability or the nature of the disability. If any employee seeks a reasonable accommodation, the nature of their disability may be disclosed for the purpose of availing of an accommodation. While my Department records the number of employees with a disability in order to comply with Part 5, of it does not record intellectual disabilities separately.
Under the 2005 Act, public bodies staffed by civil servants report via the Monitoring Committee in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, while all other public bodies report via the Monitoring Committee in their parent Departments. Public bodies must report to their Monitoring Committees by 31 March each year. Monitoring Committees must then report to their respective Ministers and the National Disability Authority by the 30 June. As such, the latest figures available in respect of my Department and the bodies within its remit are for 2017, as listed in the following table.
|
Name of Body |
Total Employees 2017 |
No of employees with a disability 2017 |
% of employees with a disability 2017 |
|
Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation |
871 |
45 |
5.17% |
|
Competition and Consumer Protection Commission |
91 |
6 |
6.59% |
|
Enterprise Ireland |
632 |
26 |
4.11% |
|
Health & Safety Authority |
170 |
6 |
3.53% |
|
IDA Ireland |
335 |
13 |
3.88% |
|
InterTrade Ireland |
44 |
2 |
4.55% |
|
National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) |
137 |
6 |
4.38% |
|
Personal Injuries Assessment Board |
83 |
1 |
1.20% |
|
Science Foundation Ireland |
58 |
2 |
3.45% |
In 2018 my Department established a Disability Consultative Committee, whose agenda for 2019 includes issues around disability awareness training and reviewing actions under the National Disability Inclusion Strategy 2017-21. The National Disability Inclusion Strategy is committed to increasing the public sector employment target of persons with disabilities from 3% to 6% by 2024, and embeds this target into all public service workforce planning and recruitment.
In addition, my Department has participated in the WAM (Willing Able Mentoring) project led by AHEAD (the Association for Higher Education Access and Disabilities) and in Job Shadow Day, an initiative led by the Irish Association of Supported Employment. Both of these initiatives provide the opportunity for people with disabilities to gain experience in different workplaces through coaching, mentoring and job shadowing, as well as building the capacity of employers to integrate disability into the workplace.
