Denis Naughten (Longford-Roscommon, Fine Gael)
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Question 121: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the efforts he is making to encourage and assist persons with disabilities and long-term illnesses to identify and take up available employment, training, educational and other self-development opportunities when appropriate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11903/05]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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My Department operates a number of schemes which provide income support to persons who are unfit to work because of illness. These payments include, for example, the disability benefit and invalidity pension schemes and the means tested disability allowance. In addition, there is a further range of benefits available under the occupational injury benefits scheme for people who have been disabled as a result of an accident at work.

Facilitating return to work or participation in the active labour force is one of the main objectives of the social welfare system. There are a number of specific employment and training incentives available within the system to encourage and facilitate people, including people with disabilities, to take up available employment and training options.

These include the back to work allowance which can assist transition to work for people in receipt of disability related payments. In addition, there are income disregards which exempt a proportion of earnings for means tested payments. It is also possible for people in receipt of disability related payments to receive exemptions from the general no work conditions in the case of certain rehabilitation employments.

As part of the Government's expenditure review initiative, a working group established by my Department completed a review of the illness and disability schemes and identified a number of areas where employment support could be strengthened within the system and across Departments. The review argued for: recognition of the fact that some people's medical and other circumstances may mean that they have some capacity for work, but may never achieve full-time work; ensuring that employment support measures should not act as a disincentive for people with disabilities and long-term illnesses in maximising their employment and earnings potential; retaining a range of employment supports for different groups, and ensuring that clients are referred to the most suitable option, having regard to the nature of their illness-disability, age, social circumstances, etc.; and the introduction of early intervention measures aimed at reintegrating people who sustain serious illnesses, injuries and disabilities back into the workforce before they become long-term dependent on social welfare payments.

The review also stresses the importance of meeting the additional costs of disability in ways that are less dependent on labour force status, if people with disabilities are to be given the opportunity of participating in the workforce. The review sets a strategic direction for policy in respect of these schemes in the future and its recommendations will be taken on board in the context of the future development of the scheme.