Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

My last question touches on - it has been touched on already to a certain extent - the interaction between disabled persons, the social welfare system, the world of work and then other employment supports.

The witnesses talked about the fear of losing supports if people take up employment, but also how certain supports are structured. Separately, we are seeing at the moment with the basic income for artists, disabled artists are losing a large share of their disability allowance, which should not happen if we want people to stay in the arts or, indeed, in other sectors.

One of the points from the Open Doors Initiative was removing the onus from the employer to apply for grant support and empowering the jobseeker with a disability to seek work with the supports in place. Could the witnesses talk through that a little more? In some ways, that envisages a kind of transformation of the system that is already there. It was said that the employer has to sign off on the wage support and the point was made about even the language around all that. How could that system be transformed so that a person is able to go to a job with the supports in place and there is very little for the employer to do then? That would help in changing the barriers within organisations to taking on people with a disability.