Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Employment Strategy and Impact on Disabled Persons in the Workplace: Discussion

Mr. Adrian Stewart:

In terms of employers accessing the reasonable accommodation fund, there is a stage before that, namely the lack of awareness we have already talked about. For quite a lot of employers we deal with, we find that they know somebody or there is a person in their family who has a disability and that is why they have become interested in it and become champions of it. We rarely get employers coming to us asking to hear more about the reasonable accommodation fund and how they can access it. We would need to be working with them before they get to that point around creating awareness and having a champion. We find that having a champion within an employer's work site is what works. Then we can get some movement from there.