Dr. Aideen Hartney:

The area of employment is hugely wide-ranging because the circumstances that prepare somebody for employment start way back when expectations are raised as child and children are asked "What are you going to do when you grow up?". That was the thinking behind the comprehensive employment strategy, in that it would span the life course and would be a whole-of-government approach to improving employment outcomes for disabled people. While not wanting to presuppose what might go into a UNCRPD implementation strategy, it is highly likely there will be a focus on employment in that strategy and that will be important in pulling some of those levers. Some of the things we have found through our work that would be needed to improve employment outcomes is there is often good practice at local level or in particular regions or services, but there is not a coherent national approach to this. That is something it would be important to work towards. Consider, for example, the area of supported employment and initiatives like WALK and many others around the country where supported employment and job coaching has shown benefits and been shown to work. There is a policy about approaching that agreed between a number of Departments since 2018, but again it has not proved possible to implement that approach. That would be one of the supports that would be helpful in improving those outcomes. Also, over 70% of people who have a disability will have acquired it while of working age and many people will have exposure to employment, so it is important to keep those links with employment going even after acquiring a disability. Again, that is where a national programme for vocational rehabilitation would be something important to develop. We have many areas of good practice at the individual service level, but there are still gaps in the Irish system and a coherent system to address some of those would be helpful.

A huge amount of work was done under the Make Work Pay initiative the Department of Social Protection led on with respect to the financial incentives and disincentives to taking up employment. That is an area where there has been progress. The earnings disregard specifies the particular amount a person may earn before he or she loses his or her entitlement to disability allowance or the medical card. It has been steadily raised over the last number of budgets and it is showing people exiting disability allowance to take up employment. Tracking that progress would help address the question the Senator is asking about the cost-benefit analysis. It is also worth making the point that sometimes the costs are borne by one sector of Government and the benefits felt by another and that has proved quite challenging in securing cross-departmental co-operation on some of these issues in the past.

The Senator is right the OWL project has a been a great example of good practice and showing good outcomes for disabled people. Our understanding is it was being rolled out a bit more widely across other Departments and public bodies and we would certainly like to see that built on. A common theme running through the remarks I have made is there are areas of good practice or where something has been trialled, and it is about capturing the learning as to what worked and what did not from all those initiatives and then putting in place something that can be consistently applied across the country.