Ms Christabelle Feeney:

I will be brief. I agree with all of Ms McGriele's points. Many of the obstacles are similar irrespective of whether an individual has experience or is starting out in employment. At some stage, every single one of us has gone for a job. We read that we needed three years' experience, five years' experience or whatever and decided we would not apply for those jobs because we would not get them. With our Employers for Change service, we are trying to get companies to be much more flexible around those applications and to understand that it is okay if people's CVs look different, as people do not have to do the job in the same way for them to be successful.

From the perspective of individuals with disabilities, we do a great deal of work on CV skills and confidence building under our Towards Work project. Confidence is a major issue for someone who has faced multiple barriers in every aspect of life or who has had a negative experience when applying for a job. Maybe someone applied for 100 jobs and no one even had the courtesy to respond.

Ms McGriele and Senator Sherlock spoke about remote work providing opportunities. The research we conducted on that matter is on our website for anyone who would like to access it. I will give a brief example of something that arose during the research. It presents a significant obstacle and has to do with the public sector. The reasonable accommodation fund is available for private sector employees. It is not available to entrepreneurs – the question of what supports are available to entrepreneurs with disabilities needs to be examined – but it is also not available to public sector employees. There is an assumption that people will be provided with reasonable accommodations in the public sector, given that it is the public sector, but when we conducted our research around remote working during Covid-19, we found a shocking example. A participant in the research who was working in the public sector had requested a reasonable accommodation. Management had made the assumption that the individual's home life was set up for work, but that was not the case, as the individual needed certain assistive technologies. Since the reasonable accommodation fund was not available, it was suggested to the individual by someone in management that the individual might consider getting a credit union loan to buy a piece of assistive technology. This example is a slight aside to the topic the Senator raised, but it is important as these are the genuine scenarios that people are facing every day when they just want to get up and go to work. We must understand that reasonable accommodations are important and that the offer of remote working should be taken into consideration as a reasonable accommodation, not as an alternative to same.

There is an obligation on employers to support people and ensure they can do everything they want to do in their working lives while also including them in the social aspect. The social element of work is particularly important for disabled people. It is their connection to the rest of society, from which they can sometimes be othered.

Those were my key points on the Senator's questions. I am sorry if I took up some extra time.