Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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654. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the extent to which he and his Department will support the independent living movement with particular reference to fully or partially disabled men and women with a view to accessing the workplace in a more meaningful way; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15003/22]

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I engage on an ongoing basis with a range of stakeholders, including disability service providers and Disabled Persons Organisations to make progress on the issues and challenges facing people with disabilities and to further realise the UNCRPD in Ireland.

My Department coordinates a dedicated national strategy to address employment barriers for people with disabilities - the Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities 2015-2024 (CES). This is the overarching disability employment policy initiative in Ireland.

Employment contributes significantly to the capacity of people with disabilities to live independently and the CES takes a cross-government approach, bringing together actions by Government Departments and Agencies to address the barriers and challenges to employment of all persons with disabilities. The CES’s strategic priorities are to build skills, capacity and independence, to provide bridges and supports into work, to make work pay, to promote job retention and re-entry to work, to provide co-ordinated and seamless supports and to engage employers.

My Department has responsibility for a number of specific actions under the CES that are aimed at raising awareness amongst employers and providing support to them in employing people with disabilities. To this end, my Department have funded the establishment of a disability information service for employers run by the Open Doors Initiative. This service ‘Employers for Change: A Disability Information Service’ provides expert peer source of advice and information on employing staff with disabilities, with a view to enhancing the confidence and competence of individual employers to employ, manage and retain staff with disabilities. This is complemented by a range of actions under the Strategy being led by differing Department and Agencies.