Professor Tom Cooney:

I can answer that because I have done some research on it. The local development companies or partnerships operate on an ad hocbasis. There are people who provide support to those with a disability who are seeking to start a business but they are unlikely to have been trained to work with people with disabilities. Occasionally, and I mean occasionally, some partnerships run a programme for people with disabilities, but the offering is completely inconsistent. There is a postcode lottery in that it depends on where you live and when it is happening. There is no national plan or strategy and there is no consistency of offering. The other problem we have is that if you ask somebody in the system whom to go to for help, they genuinely do not know. They cannot say who a person with a disability who wants to start a business should talk to and who is offering a course. Nobody has an idea. One of the proposals that has been made is for a portal or central point of reference. The local enterprise office could be that.

One of the Deputy's questions was on the local enterprise offices. They are supportive of the programme we run and provide the mentors. We train the mentors to work with people with a disability so they will have empathy and an understanding of the additional and distinctive challenges they face.

Beyond that, there are no tailored supports for people with disability through the local enterprise office. I wonder whether the localenterprise.iewebsite is top standard in terms of accessibility. It would be interesting to do an audit on that alone. There is no strategy from Enterprise Ireland around working with people with disability even though that was one of the actions from one of the previous plans. If you look across the system in terms of enterprise supports, you will see there is nothing tailored being provided through local development companies, LDCs; local enterprise offices, LEOs; and Enterprise Ireland.

I will reference Mr. Hennessy again. Some members of the committee would have been in on the email on this. I am not saying anything that is not already publicly available. He questioned the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment regarding tailored supports. The letter he received back detailed the supports available to him but there was nothing tailored in it. That is the whole argument. It was all general supports that are widely available to anyone. Then Mr. Hennessy was told to talk to the Department of Social Protection for benefits and to the offices of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, about disability because they deal with that. The lack of understanding regarding the question he asked, which was what supports are available to him as somebody with a disability, was completely disregarded. That is the point that I hope the committee will take away from today. I hope that answers the Deputy's question.