Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department provides a wide range of income and employment supports to assist jobseekers and employees with disabilities, and their employers. These supports include the Reasonable Accommodation Fund and the Disability Awareness Support Scheme.

The Reasonable Accommodation Fund provides financial support for people with disabilities and for employers to help make their workplaces more accessible. The Disability Awareness Support Scheme provides funding for disability awareness training for employees.

I published a review of these schemes last autumn. The review recommends combining the two schemes into a single flexible scheme, simplifying systems and processes, providing approval in principle, and promoting the reformed scheme.

It also recommends increasing funding, extending workplace needs assessments, and job coaching to new recruits and all existing employees, increasing the number of support hours eligible for funding, providing support for blended working, and opening the scheme to other employers, for example the voluntary and community sector.

My Department is currently working to operationalise these recommendations and I expect to launch a reformed scheme towards the end of Q1 2024.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.