Mr. Peter Brabazon:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. We conduct a deep assessment with the candidate to find out what he or she can do and wants to do. It is all voluntary – people come to us, there is no charge on them and we do not discuss a specific role for the candidate at the time. The typical areas are IT, finance and the sciences. We have two people working in PR. The roles are across the board. The majority of people we work with are autistic.

We give people the confidence to go through the interview process. At the same time, we speak to the company so that the interview panel knows about the person and what social accommodations the interview system should make.

The company, at local level in particular, will have been briefed by us. Like many organisations, we also have a buddy system. If a company likes a particular person out of a number of CVs that we put forward for certain roles, we brief local co-workers just before that person starts on what they need to do to support him or her. It is all about disclosure at various levels. If a person does not like the canteen because of the noise, the co-workers will know and be supportive if that person disappears to have lunch by himself or herself. The person is not being antisocial. It is just that he or she needs to do that. The same applies if the person needs to sit beside a window or so on. The co-workers become supporters of the buddy as well. We assign a dedicated person in the company to our candidate. Once the candidate has settled down after the so-called onboarding period, we check in regularly. Covid drove us to retain supporting roles and to move from having checks more than once per month to almost once per week. We have people who we are still supporting after nine years, but most become independent.

We are reaching a new point where our work is about career development. Many people have reached something of a glass ceiling in their companies, in that they do not have the necessary qualifications but have the intelligence to do the job. We are having a great deal of success on this front this year with some of our older companies.

Company referrals are made to us in various ways. Typically, flag bearers for us in one company talk to another company, which then contacts us. For a company, this is about gaining talent. There are some charges around it, but that is logical to do. If companies are clever enough and use our support, they can avail of the wage subsidy support scheme and so on. Typically, we match many of the rates charged by recruiters anyway. We have to be a legal body in that respect.

Sometimes, company referrals come to us through a person who knows someone with a disability. It does not have to be autism. If the individual approaching us is the top person in the company, it just happens, but he or she is often in HR or a senior manager.

The Deputy's final question was on retention. As a generalisation, our people tend to stay in their roles for longer because they are happy to have their jobs. Lately, some have been trying to develop their careers. We have helped them move to other companies or, more preferably, to grow within their current companies. This has happened successfully this year with three people – two have stayed and one has left. That is life.

One guy was headhunted by another company. What can we do?