Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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144. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection his plans to improve access to the workforce for people with disabilities; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32382/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government prioritises improvements to employment supports to enable more people with disabilities to enter and stay in employment.People with disabilities can access a range of supports through their local Intreo office as Intreo staff can meet with jobseekers to discuss their individual needs, aspirations, and experience, and offer appropriate training and employment opportunities.My Department's Intreo service is a single point of contact for all employment and income supports in the State. Disabled people can access mainstream employment schemes such as Community Employment and Tús as well as referral to tailored supports such as Employability. This is a service that offers a professional job-matching service, on-going support and advice and information on employment supports for people with disabilities. In July 2022, my Department launched Early Engagement. The scheme aims to proactively engage with disabled people in the early stages of disability or illness about options for education, training or employment. Over 30,000 people have been contacted and over 3,700 referrals have been made for further education or employment supports since the scheme launched.In July 2024, my Department launched a new scheme called Work and Access. This scheme offers seven supports to improve access in the workplace for people with a disability. Funding is available for communication supports, work equipment, workplace adaptations and training.In December 2023, my Department established the WorkAbility programme - it is co-financed with the EU Employment, Inclusion, Skills, and Training Programme. This programme aims to support people with disabilities into employment through 57 local, regional and national projects. The programme aims to support over 13,000 disabled people over its lifetime.The Wage Subsidy Scheme supports employers to hire people with disabilities through a subsidy. In August 2024, my Department published a review of the scheme to make it more accessible and flexible to people with disabilities and their employers.As a result, the minimum hours for the scheme were reduced from 21 to 15 hours. The scheme was expanded to those on Partial Capacity Benefit and to the community and voluntary sector. An additional €3.7 million has been allocated to the scheme. I recently launched the launched the revamped scheme together with the Taoiseach, Minister Foley, and Minister of State Naughton. We are also now running a media campaign to raise awareness of this very beneficial scheme for employers and employees.Notwithstanding these improvements, the Government recognises that more needs to be done to support people with disabilities into employment. The Programme for Government commits to examining ways to make it easier to regain Disability Allowance if employment ceases and to expanding successful programmes like WorkAbility.In addition, the Government has prioritised the development of a New National Disability Strategy in a cross-government initiative. A key feature of this strategy will be improving employment outcomes for people with disabilities.I trust that this clarifies the issue for the Deputy.