Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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At the start of the meeting, Deputy O'Reilly raised the level of employment for people with disabilities, which is lower than we want it to be. It is approximately 32% or 33% nationally. The EU average is roughly 55%. A strategy plan is in place. My question relates to reserved contracts for companies more than 30% of whose staff are people with disabilities. It is done quite a bit in Scotland. I recently visited the Rehab Group National Learning Network centre in Tallaght. It has some HSE contracts, but will potentially lose them because other companies are coming in at a lower rate. Almost 100% of the staff of this organisation are people with disabilities. Losing that type of contract is not where we want to be. Scotland has a good initiative. I think it is called section 21 or something like that. Essentially it allows for reserved contracts for companies more than 30% of whose staff are people with disabilities. Is that something we could do as part of promoting that companies employ people with disabilities and to support organisations like Rehab Group and the National Learning Network?