Mr. Haydn Hammersley:

I thank the joint committee for the opportunity to speak today. I am joining the meeting on behalf of the European Disability Forum, which is the representative body of persons with disabilities to the European Union and the Council of Europe.

In my opening statement, I will talk about the situation that we see in general across the European Union and where Ireland stands with regard to its EU counterparts. According to Eurostat, which is the EU's data collection agency, across the EU, around 50% of persons with disabilities are employed, compared with approximately 76% of people without disabilities. The gap is troubling enough, but it only tells part of the story. What data often fails to capture is the quality of employment available to persons with disabilities.

We know, for example, that persons with disabilities are more likely to be in lower paid roles. A report from the European Institute on Gender Equality revealed that women with disabilities earn just 83% of what women without disabilities earn. Men with disabilities earn just 84% as much as men without disabilities. When you combine this with the increased cost of living associated with having a disability, and the fact that in many EU countries disability allowance is lost or significantly reduced when a person enters the workforce, it is no surprise that, on average, 11% of workers with disabilities in the EU experience in-work poverty.

Securing a job in the first place is often a major hurdle. Stigma and discrimination remain powerful forces. Many employers still believe that hiring a person with disabilities will be costly or reduce productivity, but the evidence tells a different story. A study by the Job Accommodation Network in the United States found that 60% of workplace accommodations cost absolutely nothing, and the average cost when adjustments do need to be paid for and are not entirely free, back in 2019 when the study was conducted, was only around $500 or more or less €490. Moreover, EU legislation empowers member states like Ireland to use state aid to offset these costs and to promote positive actions, such as wage subsidies or preferential tax regimes for inclusive employers. EU-funded research from the European Disability Expertise network shows that these kinds of supportive measures, rather than punitive ones, have the greatest impact on improving employment outcomes for persons with disabilities.

Of course, employment is not just about finding a job. It is also about being able to create work when the right fit is not out there for you. As Mr. Hennessy explained, entrepreneurship and self-employment offer powerful avenues for participating in the labour market. To unlock this potential, we need to ensure that persons with disabilities have easier access to financing and grants to start their own business.

As for what we know specifically about Ireland and the particular challenges persons with disabilities face compared with those in other countries, while Ireland is to be commended on its policies moving away from segregated, sheltered workshops for persons with disabilities, the kind that we still see too regularly in other EU member states, we still see that persons with disabilities lack opportunities to enter the open labour market.

Ireland has one of the biggest disability employment gaps in the whole of Europe, with the average employment rate of persons with disabilities being 38.2 percentage points lower than for persons without disabilities, compared with an EU average of 24 percentage points. In Ireland, the cost of disability also has a significant impact on employment perspectives. For example, the income disregard rate, or the amount that persons with disabilities can earn before they start losing their disability allowance, is just €165 a week, after which people's payments start to reduce. This is a low threshold, particularly given how high the cost of living is in many parts of Ireland compared with other EU member states.

The fact that in Ireland access to certain key benefits such as the medical card, free transport, fuel allowance and social housing are linked to being on disability allowance also make entering the labour market disadvantageous and at times very risky. In certain other member states, access to such benefits is decoupled from employment status. While in Ireland some of these benefits can be retained for a fixed amount of time, the extra daily costs for persons with disabilities do not gradually disappear, meaning persons with disabilities in Ireland who work still experience the stress of that cliff edge of loss of supports, and the negative impact it has on their income. There is therefore understandably much fear around entering the labour market as a person with disabilities in the Irish context.

The European Disability Forum therefore urges the joint committee to consider not only how we can improve access to employment, but how we can elevate its quality, support inclusive hiring practices, empower persons with disabilities to become job creators themselves, and remove the unnecessary risks that persons with disabilities currently face when entering the labour market. The right to work is fundamental and it must be made real for everyone. I thank the committee for its time.