Mr. Donal Leahy:

I thank Senator McGreehan for her questions. I will get through as many of the questions as I can. Some 4.7% of Enterprise Ireland employees self-declare as having disabilities. This is the number in this regard. Turning to the question of whether we have targets, I would not say that we do at the moment. What we are doing is the work I mentioned with Inclusio. At the end of 2023, we surveyed and we have a baseline. From that work, we are going to know where we are and we will be able to benchmark. Targets will certainly come out of this endeavour. We have the data and we use this to keep us going in respect of targets.

The Senator also asked about training for all staff. Yes, we do have that. All staff have got training. I have been on training myself. To refer back to some of the comments from Deputy Ellis in respect of why we are doing this and if staff have been trained before, the answer is that they have. Although there has always been training on diversity and equality in Enterprise Ireland, it is still necessary to do it. This is despite the fact that it has been the case for a number of years. Probably two things are driving this endeavour. One is that there are individuals in Enterprise Ireland who are passionate about disability as an issue and they realise there is a need for education in this regard from their colleagues and others. This is definitely driving this undertaking. The other thing driving it is that Enterprise Ireland is a very large organisation, with 800 or 900 people. In the context of an organisation of this size, as our HR department knows, it is important to do these things right. People, therefore, have a job to do in respect of providing this training and this is why we have brought in outside partners to provide the expertise we do not have, whether that is Inclusio or Open Doors. The upshot of why I say this was probably needed is that the culture has changed.

The penny dropped in Enterprise Ireland on the social model. It had not a number of years ago.

Moving on slightly, do we have specific programmes to deal with people with disabilities? The St. Michael's House programme we have had for a number of years is specific and targeted, so we do. In general terms, the approach Enterprise Ireland has taken has been of delivering inclusive services rather than the main thrust being the delivery of separate disability services. When we were thinking about that and whether it was the appropriate approach, we consulted the National Disability Authority which confirmed it was best practice and advised us to take that approach.