Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

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

Photo of Garret AhearnGarret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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That is a very good point. We did some training in autism last week. It was a very interesting one and half hours, discussing autism and learning about it from AsIAm, to become a parliament that is autism aware. We should be doing that if we are developing policy.

On long-term employment, an initiative that has been quite successful in Scotland is to reserve contracts for companies that employ a certain percentage of people with disabilities. There are contracts reserved for those companies. It encourages the companies to keep people with disabilities on long-term contracts rather than internships. We do not do enough of this in Ireland. What are the witnesses' views on this? Do they believe it could enhance companies to keep people on longer contracts?