Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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876. To ask the Minister for Health the absolute and relative number of persons with disabilities employed by his Department in each of the years 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2020; if these persons are in full-time or part-time roles; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4529/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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All employees within my Department are asked to declare a disability through an anonymous online survey on a voluntary basis. The responses are gathered and returned to the Central Monitoring Committee annually.

The survey returns from 2015 to 2019 inclusive are provided in the table below (attached). The figures show that the number of declarations has doubled from 3.6% in 2015 to 7.4% in 2019. The Department of Health intends to carry out a disability census for 2020 in the coming weeks. The Department does not hold any data which could clearly set out the number of staff with disabilities working either full-time or part-time.

The Department of Health participates in the Willing and Able Mentoring (WAM) programme and has a Disability Liaison Officer.