Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been listening to what has been said and I have heard a number of words such as "exploring", "reviewing" and "piloting". Mr. Flanagan spoke about the fragmented approach to the delivery of employment services for people with disabilities. As a public representative, if I was approached by people with disabilities about finding work, which I have been, I would not know where to steer them to get advice and to get onto a system. We have a fragmented approach. We have people sitting on bodies, boards and whatever else, going to meetings and bringing experience from one meeting to another but, ultimately, there is too much of that going on. Too much money is being spent on all of the policies, reviews and whatever else without actually getting results. The NDA indicated that there must be 15,000 additional disabled people between the ages of 20 and 64 in work by the end of 2024. We will probably have to wait until the analysis is done on the 2022 census to see where we are going with that. It beggars belief that we do not have a system to look at all of the money that is going out and the outcomes we are getting from it. Who controls the annual statistics on employment within the disability sector? If we have to wait for the census every five years, things will pass us by and we will end up analysing the results for the five years until the next census comes along without actually doing work.

SOLAS has put a number of apprenticeships out there and is dealing with them. There are additional apprenticeships in play in biopharmaceuticals, the digital area and so on, but the information is not out there. People do not know about these things. I do not want another agency hired in to do something about that. It is time to stop posturing about these things. We need a system whereby each year all bodies getting funding in respect of employment or whatever it is return a report to the funding body detailing the outcomes, that is, the number of people who benefited and by how much. It should include details on whether the employment is temporary, whether it is part-time or full-time and the area of work involved. We need hard facts to understand what is going on here.

From talking to people who have disabilities, it is my understanding that they just do not know where to go. It is important that we grasp this now. We have to measure what we are doing rather than keep doing what we are doing, which is, from what I have heard all morning, reviewing, piloting, exploring and putting together working groups and strategies. If that man in Bantry, whose name eludes me at the moment, is not there to help the people down there and if he is telling me that he is finding it hard to get information on how to deal with people despite him being at the coalface, we are really and truly not going anywhere fast. We have targets to meet but it seems we are not setting any annual targets. We are not measuring we have actually achieved the targets we have. We are not taking any corrective action where they are not being achieved. We are spending a lot of money on nothing. At the end of the day, we need to make sure that, if there is money available for apprenticeships, there are banners outside of SOLAS offices saying that people with disabilities are welcome on courses and will be assisted. There needs to be a contact number given and people need to be brought in, interviewed and put on an apprenticeship course. It is as simple as that. We have to put the resources into that rather than into reviews, pilots, explorations, strategies and meetings all over the place. I am frustrated listening to what I have heard this morning. I feel for the people who have disabilities if they are listening to this.

We have a number of witnesses here today. They all have a niche in this game but the people who really matter are those with the disabilities. From a Government point of view, at this stage, we have to put our hands up and say that, because a person with a disability has additional expenses of up to €12,000 a year, if they are brave enough and want to take up employment, we will not cut their disability allowance until we know they are in gainful employment. We need to make sure that happens. We want to transition people away from being supported by the State. Under the UN convention, they have a right to work. We need to do that not by talking about barriers, strategies, reviews and whatever, but by getting on with the bloody job we are supposed to do. I will leave it at that. Perhaps the witnesses will have some comments for me.