Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I indicated earlier, actions were implemented last year and we will take further action this year. Programmes are in place to help people with disabilities take advantage of employment opportunities. Many of these programmes are administered through the Department of Social Protection and, specifically, INTREO. Available supports include the employability service, training programmes and the wage subsidy scheme. We have sought to build on these programmes in the 2013 plan. One area on which we focused was technical support for equality mainstreaming for providers of further education and training and labour market programmes. Funding was approved for six equality mainstreaming projects in June 2013. The flow of work continues and we need to use the action plan for jobs as a whole of Government initiative to build on the progress made thus far.

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