Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ellis. Yes, for the first time, people with intellectual disabilities will be there as a priority group. We obviously will be working with the National Disability Authority, as the Deputy rightly said, around definitions and accuracy around this. I have in front of me figures from a document the National Disability Authority, which, by the way, does incredible work, gave to me, that is, its disability statistics fact sheet from October 2018. At that time, we had 66,611 people who had an intellectual disability listed as their primary disability. Therefore, a very significant number of people in our population have an intellectual disability. I certainly do not want to suggest there have not been examples of good practice in parts of the system; there have been. From an actual data point of view and policy point of view, however, it has not had the visibility it needed before now. I think that is a view we all share. That is why the new national access plan will define them as a priority group and define the issue as a priority. What do these things mean? It means it gets a reporting focus within the national access plan it has not gotten up until now. That helps in terms of resources but also in terms of policy.

I find myself having to agree with the Deputy on part-time courses. He rightly broadened the issue to include people with mental health challenges. I could broaden it further. When I meet lone-parent organisations, they highlight the fact that the availability of a programme on a part-time basis can make all the difference in terms of whether someone can actually access third-level education.

I also heard during the Covid-19 pandemic about a lot of people managing to access education because it was provided in a different way. Online learning certainly did not work for everybody. It caused much difficulty for many people. For some people in the population, however, including people with disabilities, they actually found it was an improvement in terms of accessibility.

As the Deputy rightly said, the body of work I need to do now is to begin to define what is part-time. Genuinely, what do we mean by part-time? Is it a weekend course? That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about people who are engaging with the qualifications framework in the higher education sector but doing it in a more flexible way. We have really asked the right person in Professor Tom Collins, who is co-chairing that group with Professor Anne Looney, to begin to look at prioritising the part-time piece. I am happy to link closely with the committee on this.

I am conscious that transport has come up as an issue from my reading of some of the transcripts of this committee on a few occasions. I assure the Deputy that from our perspective, and this probably differs from other Departments, transport support is one of the categories for which the fund for students with a disability can be used. Perhaps that brings me to the Deputy's next question when he asked me to explain how the funding works. The beauty or the benefit of the fund for students with disabilities, FSD, is that a needs assessment is done. As is often the case, there is not one and, unfortunately, with too many schemes, it is not that rigid. The needs assessment is actually done. That genuinely does place the learner at the centre. Once the needs assessment is done, disability support staff from the higher education institution then take that assessment and translate it into what that means in terms of both the nature and level of supports, including transport supports and personal assistant, PA, hours, that are required by the student. The student can then draw down from an eligible expenditure listed in the FSD guidelines. We have a number of students doing this. In the year 2019 to 2020, 125 students were drawing down support for transport through that fund. It was a smaller number of 46 the following year, which I presume was to do with Covid-19. That is how that fund for students with disabilities works and transport is an eligible part.

On the apprenticeship side, although I do not want to go on too long, that is a really important issue. The Deputy highlighted why it is an important issue. Currently, the latest figures available to me are that a total of 640 apprentices have declared one or more disabilities. It is important to say the word "declared" because, obviously, it is up to the individual to declare whether he or she has a disability. However, 640 apprentices have declared a disability. A majority of those who identified as having a disability - approximately 400 - identified as having dyslexia. A further 25.5% identified as having another disability relating to learning and 12% did not specify what disability they have.

One of the big aims of our apprenticeship action plan is not just to grow the number of apprentices, although that is an aim, but to try to make sure the apprenticeship population much more closely reflects the profile of the general population. How do we get more access, diversity and inclusion? We will be establishing an equity of access sub-committee of the National Apprenticeship Alliance specifically to look at this. It will be doing things like an employer survey to determine baseline employer attitudes and the extent of knowledge of supports available to employers for supporting employees with disabilities. It will also look at targets and interventions for specific groups in terms of what extra supports we need to put in place. I will keep the committee updated on that.