Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 April 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at Local Level: Discussion

Ms Anna Shakespeare:

I will try to work through the Senator's questions. We did an equality, diversity and inclusion, EDI, survey last year as an organisation. Similar to Enterprise Ireland, we have between 700 and 800 staff. We had a 74% response rate, which was not bad. Of those who responded, 14% declared they had a disability. On the basis of that, our reasonable accommodations policy was launched and our access officer, who is a member of the HR department, was made known to everyone. People can apply to HR should they require reasonable accommodations that go above and beyond the normal ergonomic assessment we do in the workplace to ensure that workplaces, whether people are working remotely or in any of Pobal's offices, are accessible and safe.

On disability awareness, we have a partnership, like Enterprise Ireland, with the Open Doors Initiative. We have done work with Specialisterne and AsIAm on raising awareness. We also have some in-house experts on Ms Goodman's team. Some of the early years specialists are good at it. We have held a number of town hall meetings with staff. There has been a huge interest in, for example, when a child receives a diagnosis of a disability or a child is autistic, how parents can work with them. We support our staff in working with their children. Have we had a targeted disability awareness programme? No, we have not. It is in our plan as part of our EDI strategy. We would like to think we are alive to disadvantage and social inclusion, but that does not mean there is not room for lots of learning.

On the Senator's question about SICAP and the number of people-----

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