Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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204. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will confirm the continuation of the WALK PEER project in County Louth; if she will commit interim funding to this project in view of the fact that 119 young persons are currently availing of the project; her views on the benefits of the project to participants; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11716/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The project to which the Deputy refers is one of 14 Disability Activation Projects (DACT), which commenced in 2012. Over 2,000 people have participated in the projects, which are being jointly funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Department.

ESF funding will cease on 30 April 2015 and as the ESF portion of the funding was provided under the Human Capital Investment Operational Programme 2007- 2013 and this programme has recently come to an end, there is no provision for ESF co-funding arrangements to continue beyond the end of April next.

This position has been communicated to the individual projects, and it was also pointed out that the terms of the grant agreement (contract) with each DACT project stipulated that the project must be delivered and completed by the end of April this year.

I should point out that these projects were set up to explore a variety of routes towards ensuring that people with disabilities are enabled to avail of progression, education and development opportunities within the world of work, and I very much welcomed and supported the work they were doing. However, I must stress that the projects were not set up to become service delivery mechanisms in their own right.

Rather their purpose was to identify what could work with regard to increasing the capacity and potential of people on disability/illness welfare payments to participate in the labour market, and what measures utilised in the projects could be mainstreamed to improve the delivery of supports to people with disabilities in the future.

In this context, the Department has commissioned an independent evaluation of the projects to enable the Department to build on the positive aspects identified and I expect the outcome of this evaluation exercise to be available at the end of June.

I am conscious of the fact that there will still be people actively participating on some of these projects at the end of April and I have asked the Department, in managing the winding-up process for the projects, to take into account the need for those people to transition to other available supports, where appropriate. I should stress that the people involved will continue to receive their weekly income support from the Department.