Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I will outline some of the other things Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland are doing. Last year Enterprise Ireland signed a partnership agreement with Open Doors to further develop awareness campaigns and programmes that will utilise success stories of self-employed and entrepreneur role models across a variety of areas, including people with disabilities. Additionally, the office infrastructure is designed, or has been adapted, to accommodate people with intellectual and physical disabilities.

IDA Ireland is working in partnership with Generation Ireland to launch a pilot programme designed to widen the talent pool and attract people from diverse backgrounds to avail of employment opportunities. That programme is expected to deliver some good results. However, as I said at the start, we can do more and be more impactful in this area. I have personal experience of some really innovative projects which can be templates and can be replicated in other parts of the country to enable people with a disability to get trained and get the skills they need to prepare them for the workplace. Many of these projects have been very successful but we are not doing enough of them. Over the next 12 months, I hope we will see some progress on the numbers that have been pointed to in recent weeks.

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