Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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583. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of access officers responsible for providing or arranging for and co-ordinating assistance and guidance to people with disabilities accessing her Departments’ services who are employed in her Department as required by section 26 (2) of the Disability Act 2005; the way that her Department makes its customers aware of this service; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [59296/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department has a designated Access Officer as required by Section 26 (2) of the Disability Act 2005.

Details for the Access Officer, including contact information, are published on the Department's page of the gov.ie website at this link: gov.ie - Access Officer (www.gov.ie)

Visitors to my Department's offices who request accessibility assistance can make contact with the Access Officer through the reception staff or service officers.

My Department's Access Officer engages regularly with both the National Disability Authority and members of the Disability Stakeholders Group, as part of the Department’s Disability Consultative Committee.

I am pleased to inform the Deputy that my Department has an Access Team, led by our Access Officer and comprising staff from various functions including Facilities, ICT, Immigration, Events and Customer Insights, as well as the Department's internal Disability Liaison Officer. The role of the Access Team is to raise awareness and coordinate on accessibility matters across my Department under its Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy.

As the Deputy may be aware, my Department's EDI Strategy was published in March of this year and prioritises three areas of focus for strategic impact:

- Achieve better policy outcomes and improve the accessibility and quality of our services;

- Support the development of a skilled and diverse workforce;

- Build and embed a workplace culture which facilitates, supports and encourages contributions from all

Each of these strategic outcomes are underpinned by a number of actions which the Department will implement over the life of the EDI Strategy.