Ms Marion Wilkinson:

When the OECD did that report for us it looked at where we stood in relation to other European countries. Dr. Tamming has spoken about supported employment but that is a huge gap we have in comparison with other European countries, with the conditionality in Ireland versus other European countries. For example the option of working six or eight hours a week is not included in our model of supported employment. There is a restriction - and my colleagues in Rehab Group will know more about this - or a limitation on the kind of support that a job coach will deliver. In the Irish system it is 18 months whereas in other European countries if a disabled person wants to stay at work and has access to a job coach, that is maintained. There is also a caseload number of 25 people in the Irish system that a job or supported employment coach would work with. They are all people with high support needs. That is quite an unwieldy number. The supported employment model here is quite an outlier in comparison with what they are doing in other European countries. There are also soft-skill practices that we do not seem to do in Ireland that are available in other European countries. This is a way in which the reasonable accommodation fund is framed and applied. Some of that is, if somebody wants to take reduced hours, depending on their needs, we do not have that in place. The OECD made a few recommendations about reduced hours or flexible working and more supported, remote, working, that we should have available to people. They are the kinds of options that other European countries have in place, and we do not. They are practical things that we could develop and initiate.