Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Deputy's remarks. His question relates specifically to community employment schemes. Of more than 21,000 participants on community employment schemes at the end of October, 983 were categorised as being in the disability allowance cohort. This indicates that only a small percentage of recipients of the disability allowance participate in community employment. While we do not have time to discuss this issue in detail, we could have a fruitful discussion on the matter on a subsequent date.

The Department is working on the disability activation project, DAT. I secured funding of more than €7 million, including support from the European Social Fund, which will be spent over several years on 14 projects under the DAT. These projects are live in the Border, midlands and west region and will run until April 2015. They are aimed at providing practical insight into how best to engage with people with disabilities and increase their employment prospects. Having had an opportunity to visit many of them, I note they are making good progress. I can provide the Deputy with more information on the disability activation project and what we are learning about how to get people with a disability who desperately want to work - their parents also want them to work - into employment.

Under the Department's employability services, we offer wage subsidies to employers who take on a person with a disability and small adaptation grants if premises need to be modified. In addition, the Department has ring-fenced 1,000 community employment places for people who have experienced drug addiction and are in rehabilitation, many of whom are in receipt of a disability-type payment.

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