Mr. Donal Leahy:

I will indeed. I thank Deputy Ellis. I will address the point about employment and the targeted approach. There are two aspects to that. The first is employment within Enterprise Ireland. There are a couple of examples of the targeted approach we take. We have a long-running arrangement with St. Michael's House. It is a provider of services to people with intellectual disabilities. For a number of years, people in St. Michael's House have been employed by Enterprise Ireland on six-month paid work experience programmes, and I believe at least one of the people on that programme went on to become a full-time employee with Enterprise Ireland.

In addition to that, we are developing a new 12-week programme, which will be a work experience programme. The first participant for that shorter programme is expected to start in June 2024. Another example I will give is that at the moment, we are working with the Oireachtas Work Learning programme, and the idea there is to partner with it on its programme for hiring graduates of the programme. It is an applied learning development and socialisation programme for young adults with intellectual disability. That should have kicked off in 2023 but there were issues with Enterprise Ireland being able to draw from the Public Appointments Service panels. We are looking for a way around that glitch but that programme will kick off as soon as we can. These are examples of what we are doing within Enterprise Ireland for a targeted approach.

With regard to Enterprise Ireland's clients, it is a relatively easy sell in certain instances. Consistently, when we survey our clients or deal with them, the number one issue they have as a barrier to being more successful in business is hiring appropriate staff. One of the answers we have for that is that there is an untapped pool of employees. We are very prominent with our website, and we repeat the message in our communications or bulletins to client companies. Also, when the account managers in Enterprise Ireland are dealing with their clients, they say there is a problem in that they need to hire 40 or 50 staff and they cannot get them.

In combination with the very generous supports from the Department of Social Protection, through the Intreo offices, there is another solution for people to hire people with disabilities. In essence, the Intreo programme subsidises people with disabilities. Hard-nosed businesspeople who are looking for staff and just looking to make a profit are very quick to take that option up. To further their businesses, they are also, in conjunction with the Department of Social Protection supports, able to help both sides of the equation.