Ms Gillian Kearns:

One of the barriers we find for remote working is, as Dr. Hassett mentioned, people being mandated back into work and it not being understood, or them having to prove, that they need to do remote working. One of the things around the area of reasonable accommodations for someone who is working from home is access to things like screen-reading software and the other elements that might be needed. It is hard enough to get these things when people are in employment. It is hard enough to get employers to get these things and they stay with the employer rather than the employee an awful lot of the time. If someone moves roles or jobs, that screen-reading software or those other access tools often do not go with them. So, when they are at home and do not have these tools, it can prove extraordinarily difficult.

We are coming back to the question of bureaucracy and having the onerous, extra labour of having to fight for things that should just be provided. That is obviously a huge barrier if someone feels that, even though it would be better to be working remotely from home, it would just be easier on balance to go into the workplace because the things they need to work would be easier to access if they were actually in an office. Having to use specific tools for their access can be a huge barrier to people.

Another barrier is access to personal assistance, PA, support. This is a huge issue for all sorts of reason. There is very limited access to personal assistance in Ireland, which obviously creates huge barriers to being able to access education, which creates barriers to accessing employment in the long run. The lack of personal assistance also impacts people's ability to access work. This is an issue that really needs to be looked at. We have raised it in other areas across disability, but it is obviously a huge issue in accessing employment for those who need to use personal assistants. It impacts transport as well. Somebody may need personal assistance to use transport but only get 20 minutes of personal assistance a day, and I do not know many people who only have a commute of 20 minutes. All of these things compound and impact on people. Obviously, we can see why all of this compounds for some disabled people to a point where they cannot access work. They are literally shut out of employment because of all these barriers being put in their way.