John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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85. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of employers that have availed of the wage subsidy scheme for the years 2020 to 2025 respectively; the number of people with disabilities who benefitted from this scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50655/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Wage Subsidy Scheme (WSS) encourages employers to employ disabled staff. It offers employers financial support to employ people with a disability through a subsidy. The work offered must be for a minimum of 15 hours per week and the subsidy is available up to 39 hours per week.

The number of employers and employee availing of the WSS at the 31st December in each of the years 2020-2024, and at 31st August 2025, are shown in the table below. These figures also include those on the Employment Support Scheme.

Table 1: Number of employers and employees availing of the Wage Subsidy Scheme, by year

John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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86. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection further to the re-launch of the wage subsidy scheme this year, the number of employers in the community and voluntary sector and commercial State-sponsored sector have taken up the scheme; the number of people with disabilities who directly benefitted from the inclusion of these sectors; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50656/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Wage Subsidy Scheme is a key disability employment support provided by my Department. It aims to encourage employers to offer substantial and sustainable employment to disabled people through a subsidy.

Last year, my Department published a review of the Wage Subsidy Scheme following a public consultation. The review made six recommendations, including to reduce the minimum required hours of the scheme, to regularly review the subsidy rate, and to remove terms such as ‘productivity deficit’ from the scheme to better align the scheme with the social model of disability. An additional €3.7 million has been allocated to implement the review’s recommendations.

Eligibility for the scheme was expanded to include employers in the community and voluntary sector and commercial state-sponsored sector. This change expands the pool of potential jobs and opportunities for disabled people. To date, 28 employers and 48 participants have benefitted from this expansion.

The final recommendation of the review was to promote and increase awareness of the scheme in order to encourage a greater uptake among employers, including those in now included community and voluntary sector. In June this year, I formally launched the reformed scheme together with the Taoiseach, Minister Foley and Minister of State Naughton. We also launched a media campaign to raise awareness of this very beneficial scheme which ran until mid-July.

I hope and expect that the implementation of the recommendations of the review and the media campaign will result in an expansion of the scheme to new employers and new sectors and that we see more disabled people directly benefit. We will continue to raise awareness of the scheme and encourage more employers to participate.

Notwithstanding these improvements, the new National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025-2030 and the Programme for Government both commit to further reviewing the minimum hours requirement under the Wage Subsidy Scheme for disabled people and to examining an increase to the payment rate.

These commitments will be advanced over the lifetime of the Government in the context of the annual budget process and in light of the resources available.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.