Ms Denise Kennedy:

That is another area where the question of inclusiveness comes in rather than just counting and labelling people. What happens generally, in my experience, is that people come into the system, they are part of the team and they go for promotion. The Willing Able Mentoring, WAM, programme generally involves people who have a physical disability. They enter the mainstream and they have all of the same opportunities as others. Under the Oireachtas Work Learn, OWL, programme, for example, a person may have a disability such that he or she can only work a certain number of hours. That is a new programme so we need to watch it and see how it goes. Again, the opportunities may be in a small range of areas so one must look very closely at what is suitable. Each case has to be looked at on its own merits. In my experience, depending on how the person comes in and what abilities he or she has - lots of them have lots of ability - they move up through the system like most others. It is not something that we have tracked but it is certainly something to take away and consider.