Ms Marian Hennessy:

The question posed was what kind of radical thinking could help Mr. Kelly and the Ability Board. Mr. Kelly and his group are trying to set up a social enterprise. There are ten or 12 people on the board and they want to be self-employed. Their idea is reaching out to companies. It is not even an idea; we have done it already with six companies in Cork. It is amazing to see the impact and the change when the people on the Ability Board are part of the disability awareness for a company. One company now employs six people and another employs six or seven people on the back of Mr. Kelly and Jamie speaking during disability awareness training.

This is a unique opportunity for the committee to look at helping to fund or set up Mr. Kelly and the Ability Board to help people nationally. It is a toolkit we can develop and share with other groups in order that the right people are making the right decisions and the right comments with the proper support.

To answer the question about radical thinking, we need to talk to people in recruitment. We know about the screening of CVs and that, with the automated online systems, it is getting more advanced. It is getting very difficult for the people I support and those Mr. Kelly interacts with. In fact, it is even challenging for the job coaches at the moment. I had a conversation one day with a HR manager in a company. He said, in his 15 years with the company, he had never once interviewed a person with a disability and asked why they were not applying to his company, which is a very well-known one in Cork. I asked him to show me a typical advert. When you put things in like "excellent communications skills", you are automatically going to exclude somebody who has a hearing issue or maybe a speech difficultly. It is those criteria companies automatically put in without even thinking. Where I work it was essential to have a full driving licence. It did not matter what the role was. It was just one of the criteria. These are small and simple changes. By bringing in people like Mr. Kelly, looking at the recruitment and getting advice at that stage, maybe we can open up the pathway a little more.

There can be much focus also on skills and aptitudes but maybe what we need to start looking at in companies or talking to them about is getting a person who is a good fit, because people can be trained. People can learn a job but it is far more important this person has the social skills, teamwork skills, ability and commitment to the company. One of the things I do when I visit companies in Cork is go on a walk-around and do a job analysis. I break down the job into all its components and see how I would match someone to a job. However, often I am in a company - it could be a manufacturing one or an IT one - where you would think some of the people we support might not have the skill sets. We ask them to carve out jobs. What are the occasional or weekly jobs we can break down into maybe a couple of hours a week that would open up an employment opportunity to somebody? We need to get away from the traditional, full-time, 39-hour a week job and look at different options and jobs people could do for four hours of a morning per week. In the public service as well it is something that needs to be opened up. People are hamstrung with regulation and red tape and many Departments to not have the flexibility to carve out jobs.

Another point is the wage subsidy scheme available where people can work for 21 hours per week. That is a great incentive to employers to open up opportunities. Many people we support are working an average of maybe 15 hours per week. That is something that could be addressed if we looked at reducing the hours for people who might have more complex needs or impairments.

I will finish with two other comments. I am working with a retail chain at the moment. It has committed to us that, every time it opens a store, it wants to employ somebody with an intellectual disability. That is a challenge for me in Cork because in every town in Cork I need to ensure I have a job coach present being able to support the person. The chain reached out to me throughout the year and said it wanted to roll this out nationally to every town in Ireland. There is a shop in every town in Ireland but I do not know whether there is a backup service to support the person. There are plenty of people available to go and work but we just do not have the supports. What was nice with this person recently was they employed a person with very complex needs on the autism spectrum. Due to the all the difficulties of Covid-19, this person is struggling to get back to where he was and has decided he does not want to return to work. That company has come back to me and asked can I ensure that, if I get somebody again for a job for it, he or she is a person to whom no one else will give a job. That is an amazing shift in thinking from an employer who has had that lived experience with a person we support. They are the recommendations I would make.