Jerry Cowley (Mayo, Independent)
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Question 359: To ask the Minister for Finance if the Government will consider offering employers tax incentives to employ persons with disabilities as applies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10392/05]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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There are no proposals at present to introduce new tax incentives for employers who employ persons with disabilities. Persons returning to employment after being unemployed, including persons in receipt of certain disability payments, can claim the Revenue job assist allowance where certain conditions are satisfied. The Revenue job assist scheme provides an incentive to the long-term unemployed to take up employment and employers to employ the long-term unemployed.

The scheme is available to persons who have been continuously unemployed for the immediate period of 52 weeks prior to taking up a qualifying job and in receipt of an unemployment payment, unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance, the one-parent family payment, the blind persons allowance or the disability allowance.

Under the scheme, a qualifying employee may, in addition to his or her normal tax credits, claim an additional tax deduction at the marginal rate of tax for three years after taking up a qualifying employment. The allowance in the first year of employment is €3,810 plus €1,270 for each qualifying child, reducing to two thirds of these amounts in year two and one third in year three. The second part of the scheme provides a double wages deduction and a double PRSI deduction for employers who employ the long-term unemployed.

Apart from the Revenue job assist scheme, my colleague, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, continues to develop policy for vocational training and employment of people with disabilities on a three dimensional basis by developing the skills of people with disabilities to enable them to access employment; stimulating awareness amongst employers of the contribution which people with disabilities can make to their businesses and encouraging companies to more actively consider recruiting people with disabilities; and providing specific employment supports for people with disabilities and employers.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has a commitment under Sustaining Progress to ". . . develop actions and a policy framework aimed at enhancing the potential of sheltered employment to provide better employment opportunities for people with disabilities". The Department sought to address this commitment through a more mainstreamed approach by developing a new full-time employment support scheme, FTESS, which would also be applicable to sheltered employment enterprises. The underlying objective of the scheme is to increase the numbers of persons with a disability in employment by creating, as far as practicable, a level playing field for them in seeking out or remaining in employment. The mechanism proposed is the payment of a wage subsidy to the employer to compensate for the reduced productivity of the disabled worker. A budget line of €10 million has been established for the scheme for 2005 — this figure includes the current years provision of approximately €5 million for the combined employment support scheme and the pilot programme for the employment of people with disabilties, PEP. FÁS has been requested to implement the proposed scheme as early as possible this year. It is hoped that the new scheme might be launched by the end of June.