Mr. Brian Smyth:

In response to Senator McGreehan, we see the value of social farming every day of the week. We know from more than ten years involved in the practice that it works. As one of the 46 Irish Local Development Network companies, we implement the rural social scheme in County Leitrim. We have 130 participants. They are farm family members who access what is effectively a labour market intervention. There are certainly opportunities to look at how people with disabilities could access a similar programme. Some of the farmers who provide support could overlay that scheme. We want to avoid segregation and differentiating people with disabilities. They need to be part of everyday life and seen as just citizens who have particular needs. They need to partake in the mainstream, rather than setting up separate schemes.

It is worth looking at how the farming asset can be unlocked to support people with disabilities. We have shown what is achievable in the social farming that is happening across Ireland, funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in a number of projects. The Chairman referred to connecting people. There is no doubt about a disconnection across all sectors of society between the natural environment and its rhythms, which can ground people. There is a disconnection from food. People increasingly do not realise where their food comes from. Engaging in farm activity brings that back to basics. When there is a breakdown in people's lives due to unemployment, disability, addiction, prison or whatever it may be, they can reconnect with people, the environment, the natural rhythms and the rhythms of getting up, getting out and engaging other people. That is the value that any natural setting like farming can provide.

We would like conversations with the Department of Social Protection. I recently contributed to a European network of employment services on social farming and what it means for employment services. Community employment certainly has a place. Many people on disability payments do not access community employment because they would lose their payment and they are not eligible for community employment. Do we want to create a scheme just for people with disabilities and segregate them yet again? I do not think so, if we want to take a rights-based approach. Some people who have disabilities participate in the rural social scheme, but the main scheme they access is farm assist with a payment based on farm income. There are eligibility issues.

We innovated with social farming and we are adding to and complementing that with the individual placement support programme, funded by Pobal. These approaches can be modified. We are doing in a rural setting what Mr. Le Roux is doing in an urban setting. That provides experience with social farming. It happens around the country. We have an individual placement and support, IPS, worker working with 25 people this year. It is just a one-year programme. That kind of programme could be run out and linked properly to projects such as our own and others to support people like those here today to move to self-employment. That is where flexibility comes in. We designed the IPS programme with Mr. Mark Willis, who is in the post at the minute, based on our experience of supporting people with disabilities in County Leitrim and with social farming. Our plan is to have 12 people with disabilities employed in Leitrim who were not employed this time last year. That kind of collaboration and innovation will be key. The same can happen with the rural social scheme, the Tús programme and others that we implement as local development companies around the country.