Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am talking education and part-time options and not simply the entitlement to same. I refer to things like quality part-time educational options. For example, the CE scheme is one of the few schemes that is part-time. Perhaps this is too micro in detail but that is not available to people on certain schemes. The question is about quality part-time options.

Another key issue that relates to this is the concern around the invisible, that is, those who have a disability but because disability allowance is means-tested may not be on disability allowance and, moving away from the payments, their access to the educational, the training and the employment supports. That is what I was talking about in terms of there being suitable good quality options. Are they available to people, regardless what payment scheme they are on, and to those who may not be on a payment scheme but who may have a disability?

The other witnesses might answer my question on what we heard about the iterative process because there is a real concern here. Disability is one of the issues that has not landed suddenly; it is one of the most known issues. We know it is a long-term fact of society and yet it seems there is a huge reliance on pilot schemes.

JobPath, for example, scaled up very quickly and yet we have had a litany of excellent practice schemes which seem to have come and gone. WALK PEER was mentioned as was the three-year funding. Is it national? Is it available everywhere? There is the Care project and the Inclusive Learning Project at Maynooth University, about which we heard great things but then the funding stopped. There is also the Career Pathways, a transition to employment scheme in Trinity College. There is a litany of excellent good-practice schemes. However, what seems to happen is that the pilots are put in place but then the scale-up does not happen. I am very concerned about a new project, namely, the pilot project testing the policy approach for a comprehensive supported employment programme. This is just another example, which will be a pilot from 2018 to 2020, and will provide learning for any future scaling of such an approach. How do the Departments plan to move from pilots to national implementation?