Ms Joan O'Donnell:

I would like to echo much of what has been said about attitudes. The system does not understand the people it is supposed to serve, such as lone parents, people with disabilities and people with substance abuse issues. Among the disabled cohort, the issue of having to deal with multiple regimes is multiplied again because people are dealing with medical services and their caring and family responsibilities, etc. The system does not seem to understand that people have multiple identities. It merely sees a disabled person who needs to be activated.

From our perspective, one of the big issues the system is trying to deal with is making work pay. Although a substantial report on this issue in April of last year looked at how we can make work pay, it is being done in isolation. An effort is being made to contend with the extra costs that people with disabilities encounter when they go out to work, including transport costs and the cost of accessing a medical card. It was agreed in the report in question that the medical earnings disregard should be increased from its current level of €120 a week so that people can earn more and retain their medical cards for up to three years after they start working. This was a huge barrier for people who were entering the workforce. In the past, it caused many people to leave the workforce.

We were asked where those who have left are now. Many people who have left the workforce are quite scared or nervous about engaging with the system again. I understand from the Department of Health that we can expect to hear some news in this regard before the deadline of the fourth quarter of this year. The Department says it will come in on this sooner than the deadline. We hope that will be the case. It would not be a moment too soon. This issue is keeping a significant cohort of people out of work and has been the cause of many people leaving the workforce.

Other issues, such as access to a personal assistance service, are not understood. As we have said, many supports are provided all the way up through school and college. People get the assistive technology and equipment they need, but they cannot take such supports with them when they leave. We worked last year with a woman in County Meath who had been working with a local authority for many years. After her personal assistance supports were pulled, she could not go to the toilet during work hours. How can someone work in such conditions? What kind of violation of human rights is that?

I think it is pretty clear from everything we have been saying that this is spilling over into mental health. I think it is worth pointing out again. Many people become disengaged. The term NEETs was used in the past to describe those who are not in education, training or employment. We do not seem to use that term anymore. Those involved in the Walk project in County Louth had to walk the streets to find the people who were no longer engaging with services. The Department could not provide that information. People were not engaged with schools or other services. People in their early 20s were sitting at home and wasting away, which is not an acceptable situation for anybody to be in.

I do not have the number of people who are engaged in mainstream activation programmes at the moment. I would be curious to know whether the Department has that number. We know from the survey on income and living conditions, SILC, that unemployment in general fell from 13.9% in 2013 to 8.6% in 2016, but it did not change for people with disabilities. I think that gives a very clear answer about the effectiveness, or otherwise, of the comprehensive employment strategy.

I ask the committee to consider the resources this country is putting into that strategy and all the professionals and services and so on that are involved in it, which brings me to the caseworkers. We are now told that caseworkers in Intreo are trained and ready to meet and greet people with disabilities. The reality of what we hear on the ground is very disturbing and is enough to set people back in their lives another two years. Progression often stops at the front door. It is not that people cannot get into the buildings any more, although I think some Intreo offices are still not physically accessible; it is that attitudinal access to the service, which the State purports to provide, is not actually there. We hear horrendous stories about this, not just about Intreo, but also concerns about the employability service, which is a specialist service designed for people with disabilities. A young man with an acquired brain injury, whom we interviewed as part of our preparations for our conference on employment in 2016, said of employability services that they kept asking him what he wanted to do. He had just had an acquired brain injury. He did not know what he wanted to do. He had thought this was the service that would help him to discover that. We also know anecdotally from colleagues here that people with autism similarly find they are not met with by the services or understood. Progression is very difficult in these circumstances. Mr. Lysaght will give an example of this. I am trying to figure out where else I need to go with my response before I hand over to him.

I refer to work retention, keeping people at work and stopping the seamless cycle of people being pushed into activation and then spat out at the other end by jobs that are unsustainable, precarious, low-paid and not suitable for them. Healthy Ireland began some work at the end of 2015, I think, on looking at early intervention. It invited a great many people from a very HR-focused perspective to Dublin Castle. There were only three representatives, including me, from the disability sector, which included bodies focused on arthritis and mental health. A HR response or a technical, legalistic response to early intervention will not crack this. People will continue to leave work once they acquire a disability unless we crack it. Deputy Carey asked what we could change. Stopping the cycle to which I referred is one of the most significant things we can do.

We are delighted to see the ability programme happen. There has been really good consultation with the sector as to how it should be framed and played out. However, this is a follow-on from a previous programme called the disability activation project, DACT, which WALK was originally funded by. There has been a gap of several years and WALK has had to fight for funding in the meantime. People were being dropped and picked up according to the availability of funding. I am concerned to see whether the issues that arose out of the review of that have been brought over to the new funding programme. There is one outstanding issue which we have been trying to raise with them, namely, that assistive technology and technology in general is part of the future workplace. This is not about stacking shelves. Work is changing for all of us. I can work out of my bag here and I am sure most members can do likewise. We do not seem to understand that people with disabilities might be able to do likewise or be able to avail of more flexible working arrangements, working from home, etc. The ability programme has introduced the capacity to use assistive technology but those delivering the programme cannot give people with disabilities the technology they use without taking it off them again when they are finished the programme. It is as if, because they are no longer engaged with the programme, those delivering the programme say, "Thank you very much. We will take that back now." How can this be in the service of the people looking for work?

I could go on but I will hand over to Mr. Lysaght.