Ms Anna Shakespeare:

As chief executive of Pobal, I sincerely thank the Chair and the committee for the opportunity to come before you today to contribute to its work by sharing key data, and to provide an overview of the inclusive programmes we administer in providing supports to people with disabilities.

Pobal's work ranges from programme design to implementation support, financial administration, and governance of funding allocations. We promote quality enhancement among local community groups, develop programme and system management tools, and we work to ensure funded projects operate within agreed guidelines. Our role is not one of policy development, but we do provide feedback on programme operations, develop good practice case studies and evaluations, and demographic information that supports Government Departments in making their policy decisions. We hope to share some of the learning from the programmes Pobal supports with the committee.

Led by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the Access and Inclusion Model, AIM, programme aims to create a more inclusive environment in preschools, so children, regardless of ability, can benefit from quality early learning and care. The importance of this to the committee is very much at the heart of its work in a whole-societal approach.

The model achieves this by providing universal supports to preschool settings, and targeted supports, which focus on the needs of the individual child, without requiring a diagnosis of disability. It sets the tone and context for an inclusive future by supporting peer learning of children with or without a disability in an inclusive setting. The AIM programme started in 2016, and since then has helped many thousands of children with a disability to access and meaningfully participate in the early childhood care and education programme in preschool settings nationwide. The model has been internationally recognised and has won awards for both excellence in practice, and inclusive policy. The number of children who have been supported under AIM since the introduction of the programme in 2016 until January 2023 is 24,241.

The Ability programme was co-funded under the European Social Fund and the Government during its first two years of operation from 2018 to 2020. The aim of this programme is to bring young people with disabilities, aged 15 to 29, who were not work-ready, closer to the labour market using a range of person-centred supports. The programme was implemented nationally and supported participants in every county in Ireland. It supported a total of 2,195 young persons with disabilities, and 83% of the programme target of 2,662 participants. Some 1,755 young people with disabilities were supported to either find employment, enter into education and-or training, or become better placed to look for employment. Some 861 people gained a qualification while engaged in the Ability programme. A third of participants who were unemployed when they started Ability found employment after they exited, and a further 44% were actively seeking employment.

An evaluation of the programme has made 24 recommendations that will inform future policy and programme design, and work is under way with the Department of Social Protection to develop the Ability successor programme, with €36 million in funding sought for a new disability employment focused measure under the European Social Fund Plus. It is envisaged that the successful projects will receive funding for five years, 2024 to 2028. In the interim, a number of Dormant Accounts funding measures have been made available.

The Department of Social Protection made a Dormant Accounts funding measure available in 2021 to support persons with disabilities to improve their employment skills, advance their education or start their own business. Some 43 projects received funding, benefiting almost 2,300 participants, including 27 of the Ability programme providers. The focus was on providing supports to persons with disabilities to start their own business. The measure formed a key part of Government’s new Pathways to Work strategy, in particular item five of the strategy, Working for All - Leaving No One Behind.

The projects were of 16 months duration to 31 December 2022. A number of employment-related achievements reported by organisations to date include: employer engagement and supports; building a more inclusive workforce; skills development and career guidance; and in January 2023, an additional provision of €5 million was announced to fund projects where 38 of the 45 projects sought an extension to the end of 2023.

As part of the Dormant Accounts Fund's action plan for 2020, the then Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection also invited applications from community and voluntary organisations who wished to support and improve the opportunities for family carers, including young carers and persons with a disability.

The purpose of the funding was to assist family carers and young carers to build and retain contact with the labour market, including self-employment opportunities, and training and educational opportunities; and to assist persons with a disability to engage with the labour market and training and educational opportunities. The total fund for this measure was €5 million. A total of ten organisations with a remit of supporting people with disabilities were funded under this measure. Some 1,033 participants were supported to engage in employment activation activities and skills development training; 166 participants progressed into employment; 97 employers created opportunities for people with disabilities throughout the programme; and 182 people with disabilities reported a reduction in levels of isolation and loneliness.

The social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is supported by Pobal. It is co-funded by the Irish Government, through the Department of Rural and Community Development, and the European Social Fund Plus, ESF+. SICAP has two goals. First, to support communities and target groups to engage with relevant stakeholders in identifying and addressing social exclusion and equality issues, developing the capacity of local community groups and creating more sustainable communities. Second, to support disadvantaged individuals to improve the quality of their lives through the provision of lifelong learning and labour market supports.

People with a disability are one of the programme’s 13 target groups. The programme is managed at a local level by 33 local community development committees, LCDCs, and actions are delivered by local development companies, LDCs. SICAP applies a broad definition of disability in which the social-economic complexities of disability are acknowledged and mental health issues are often significant. SICAP collects data on disability if the beneficiary identifies as a person with a disability when registering with the programme. Local community groups that named people with a disability as their primary target group accounted for 6% or 173 of the total number of groups supported by SICAP in 2022. Individuals who registered as a person with a disability accounted for 9% of the total number of individuals who received direct one-to-one supports in 2022.

The community services programme, CSP, funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development supports community-based organisations to provide local social, economic and environmental services through a social enterprise model and creates employment opportunities for disadvantaged people. Three main types of projects are funded under the community services programme, one of which is focused on supporting community enterprises employing people distant from the labour market, including people with disabilities. Applicants must be not-for-profit social enterprises or businesses with sufficient capacity to undertake service delivery and management of staff. Of the 432 organisations funded in 2022, ten services were defined as services for persons with a disability and an additional 33 services have specified in their service description that they work with people with disabilities. In 2021, 176 people or 6% were employed with CSP supports who were previously in receipt of a disability allowance. A redesign of the CSP in 2022 has introduced a differential funding rate model. This new model looks at three distinct metrics, one of which will incentivise projects that employ from marginalised groups such as persons with a disability. A new programme call is due to be announced in March 2023 and will give priority to projects supporting the circular economy that employ from marginalised groups.

As an organisation with a social inclusion mission and to meet our public sector duty obligations under the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act, Pobal undertook an assessment of its equality, diversity and inclusion in 2022 and is presently implementing its action plan. More than 6% of the 74% of Pobal employees who chose to participate in the assessment process considered themselves to have a disability. As an employer, our role is to ensure that reasonable accommodations are made for these employees to ensure their continued successful engagement in the workplace. In the course of the past 30 years, Pobal has been working on behalf of the Irish Government to support individuals, families, children and communities. During this time, we have made a significant contribution to the economy and society in supporting the Government to deliver programmes to some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged individuals and communities in Ireland. We look forward to continuing and progressing this work into the future and I am delighted to take any questions from the committee about the information presented today.