Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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709. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the rate of unemployment for persons with a disability here; the way in which this compares with the EU average in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [54156/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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As information on disability status is not collected routinely as part of the EU Labour Force Survey, there are no regular official data on unemployment among people with disabilities for many EU countries or for the EU on average.

An approximate indicator for the information sought, for 2014, is provided by a once-off study by the Centre for European Social and Economic Policy (CESEP ASBL) on behalf of the Academic Network of European Disability Experts (ANED). These data are drawn from the EU-SILC survey, which is not designed to produce labour market information, so should not be taken as precise unemployment measures.

The ANED 2014 unemployment estimates for people with and without disabilities are given in the following table, together with the official overall unemployment rate for comparison purposes:

The data suggest the ANED estimate overstates unemployment (relative to the official figure) to a greater extent for Ireland than for the EU on average, but that the relationship between overall unemployment and that for people with disabilities is broadly similar in the two areas.

The data may also be affected by differences in the reported prevalence of disability among people of working age, which was significantly lower in Ireland (17.7%) than in the EU on average (27.1%).