Ms Simonetta Ryan:

I am assistant secretary in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection with responsibility for disability policy and the administration of the disability allowance scheme.

I am joined today by my colleagues, John Bohan and Danny Harty, also from the Department. I thank the committee for this invitation to discuss supports provided by the Department for people with disabilities, particularly in respect of employment.

I will focus on three key areas as follows: working with other Government agencies and services to ensure good cross-governmental functioning to secure better employment outcomes; providing a range of income and employment supports and services to address the needs of people with disabilities; and engaging with people with disabilities to advise them of these supports and to guide them where appropriate to employment or to other services.

Before I say something about each of these, I would like first to recall some of the main statistics of relevance to this area. According to Census 2016, there are almost 645,000 people living with a disability in Ireland. In April 2016, there were 130,000 people with a disability at work of which 122,000 were in the working age population range. People with disabilities, however, are still only half as likely to be in employment as others of working age. Census 2016 figures show that the employment rate for people with disabilities of working age is 37% compared with a rate of 73% for people of working age without a disability.

We know that many people with disabilities want to work. In our survey of 2015, 35% of people not then working said they wanted to work part time, while 8% said they wanted to work full time. Young people with disabilities are likely to start out with lower employment rates and the gap widens with age as people leave employment.

The data tell us that to improve employment rates we need a twofold approach: early engagement with young people with disabilities and a focus on retention of those already established in the workforce. For young people, the potential benefits are greatest in the crucial years following school to young adulthood when otherwise their disability threatens to keep them out of the workforce. For older people, the advantages of early engagement can also apply to those who acquire disabilities later in life and who may need retraining and other supports to stay in the workforce.

The comprehensive employment strategy was adopted by Government in October 2015 having been developed in consultation with Departments, State agencies, the National Disability Authority, NDA, and disability stakeholders. The ten-year strategy is a cross-governmental one co-ordinated by the Department of Justice and Equality and provides a roadmap to ensure that people with a disability who are able to and want to work are supported and enabled to do so. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is engaged in delivering 33 actions through the comprehensive employment strategy. Progress to date includes the publication in April 2017 of the Make Work Pay report. This was an interdepartmental report with independent external participation and chaired by Professor Frances Ruane. We have either implemented or made significant progress on some of the recommendations and I will return to some of these later.

The Department has worked jointly on the pilot project to integrate employment and mental health support which was developed with Genio and departmental funding and in partnership with the HSE mental health division, EmployAbility companies and Mental Health Reform. A central objective of this project was to improve integration between public mental health and supported employment services at national and local levels. There has been joint working, supported by the National Disability Authority, NDA, with the Department of Health and the Department of Education and Skills, on action 5.1 which focuses on transition points for people with disabilities. The group has produced a report agreed by Government, to be published shortly, outlining the policy approach and an implementation plan.

More generally, the Department participates in the comprehensive employment strategy implementation group chaired independently by Mr. Fergus Finlay who produces an annual report. We provide a range of income and employment supports. The primary income supports for people with disabilities are disability allowance, invalidity pension and partial capacity benefit. Disability allowance is a means-tested payment for people who are aged between 16 and 66. To qualify a person must be substantially restricted in undertaking suitable employment. Disability allowance is structured so that a person who wishes to do so may take up employment and still retain all, or a significant portion of, his or her payment, thereby ensuring that work is seen to pay. The first €120 of weekly earnings is disregarded in the means test for the payment while weekly earnings between €120 and €350 are assessed at 50%. A single person earning more than €420 a week can retain the minimum amount of disability allowance and continue to qualify for the free travel pass.

A number of contributors to the joint committees mentioned that uncertainty around the retention of benefits, including the medical card, represents a barrier to people with disabilities exploring their work options. The Make Work Pay report made a number of recommendations, including that the requirement that work be of a rehabilitative nature for the disability allowance earnings disregard should be dispensed with. This would mean that a report from a doctor would no longer be required before commencing work and that the focus is on capacity rather than incapacity. Legislation is required to give effect to this change and is included in the Social Welfare Bill 2017. Currently, 10% of disability allowance recipients - about 13,000 people - avail of the disability allowance earnings disregard.

Other recent changes to the income supports to make them easier to retain if employment is taken up include the extension of entitlement to a travel pass to five years after commencing full-time employment or exceeding the appropriate income threshold, which exceeds the three years recommended in the Make Work Pay report; a fast-track return to disability allowance if employment does not work out; a clear statement that disability allowance payments will not be stopped or reviewed on the basis of an enquiry about work at an Intreo centre; and the introduction of an online benefit of work estimator to assist people with disabilities in assessing the impact of taking up work on their disability payment. Since the launch of the Make Work Pay report, just over 800 disability allowance recipients have entered full-time employment and ceased claiming the allowance.

Invalidity pensionis an income support payment paid to people who are permanently incapable of work because of illness or disability. It is based on a claimant's social insurance contributions and is not means tested. While invalidity pension is generally paid to pension age, where a person with a disability wishes to return to work, he or she may apply for partial capacity benefit. Partial capacity benefit was introduced in February 2012 and is designed for people who are in receipt of long-term social insurance invalidity, illness or disability income support payments who have some capacity for work.

As well as providing these income supports, the Department also provides a range of supports specifically intended to improve employment outcomes for persons with a disability. The EmployAbility service, for example,is a nationwide employment service funded by the Department and dedicated to improving employment outcomes for jobseekers with a disability. There are 23 limited companies, each with a specific geographical remit. The Ability programmeis the new pre-activation programme for young people. The focus of the programme will be on projects aimed at young people who have disabilities and who are aged between 15 and 29 and it is designed to assist in their transition from school to further education and employment. This will be undertaken using person-centred, case management approaches that support participants to identify and follow progression pathways based on both their needs and their potential. We also provide a range of grants under the reasonable accommodation fund and the disability awareness training support scheme to assist employers in the private sector to take appropriate measures to enable a person with a disability or impairment to have access to employment.

The Department also funds two significant disability projects directed at participants in third level education. The Willing Able Mentoring programme, WAM, builds the experience and confidence of graduates with disabilities and employers through the method of a mentored work placement programme which is paid for by the employer programme. Get AHEAD is a training programme and forum for students and graduates with disabilities to discuss their experiences of education and employment.

On engaging with persons with disabilities through the public employment service, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, DEASP, network of 62 Intreo centres provides a gateway for people with disabilities who wish to explore their work options and they may voluntarily look for an appointment with a case officer to discuss their work ambitions and develop a personal plan to progress their goals. We recognise that our engagement with people with disabilities will require developing our employees' skills in engaging with them. In November 2016, a certificate in professional practice in employability services provided through the National College of Ireland was introduced for DEASP staff. There is good coverage of disability issues, including a guest lecturer who is a specialist in the area, and contributions from two staff development unit case officer trainers specialising in DEASP supports for people with disabilities.

As I mentioned earlier, the publication of the Make Work Pay report in April 2017 marked an important step in the identification of specific actions that are intended to secure better employment outcomes for people with disability. The report made many recommendations, including that disability allowance payments and other schemes should be reconfigured for new entrants aged 18 and over to ensure that their work ambitions could be explored systematically at an early age. This is referred to as the principle of early engagement.

Following the publication of the report and the recognition that some of the recommendations may be controversial, the then Minister indicated that the Government wanted to consult persons with disabilities and their families on some of the recommendations. We engaged an experienced facilitator to ensure the consultation process was as wide-ranging as possible and included representation from a wide range of stakeholders. The information documents were designed to allow people with disabilities and their families to provide an input to the process. We made considerable efforts to ensure that the materials were fully accessible. The documents were also produced in a range of accessible formats such as easy read, Braille, audio, video captioned and Irish Sign Language.

The Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, and Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, launched the consultation process in Richmond Barracks, Inchicore, Dublin 8, on 7 March 2018. Regional seminars were held in Cork, Dublin, Sligo and Limerick during March and April this year. The findings of the consultation process are being consolidated and a report will be prepared for the Minister and Minister of State on the outcome of the consultation process when it is finalised to inform the next steps in the implementation of the Make Work Pay report.

In conclusion, I hope this presentation demonstrates that while many supports and services are in place to assist people with a disability to fulfil their employment ambitions, the Department is very active in addressing the objectives of the comprehensive employment strategy in trying to improve the employment rates of people with a disability. The multifaceted nature of the barriers faced by persons with a disability calls for a similarly multifaceted approach and the Department is pursuing a range of actions across a number of areas to achieve this. The fall in unemployment and the transformation of the Intreo service provide an opportunity to make significant progress in this area.