Ms Jeanne McDonagh:

Employers For Change has been in operation for three years under Ms Feeney's direction. It is very much a resource for employers to raise their awareness around disability matters, the employment and retention of people with disabilities and best practice in the field, for example, auditing websites, publications and training of employees in leadership and research into various issues around the employment of people with disabilities.

Towards Work is a more recent development that came through Pobal funding and is now being funded by the Department as well. That is aimed at people with disabilities to make them more confident when it comes to applying for work and help them with all the work skills they need, such as CVs, interviews, internships, placements and mentoring, which we found to be very important. Basically, anything that gets them on the ladder to work. We work with the companies who are members of Open Doors to build that bridge between the potential employee and openings these companies may have. We ask them to do it in an accessible and flexible way, to have inclusive recruitment practices put in place under our training and to work towards building up the number of employees they have with disabilities who are there are on merit. It is not tokenism. They are there because they can do the work and do it really well. We want to imbue companies with that type of thinking.