Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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111. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the measures he is taking to support persons with disabilities into employment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49711/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is very aware of the difficulties that disabled people can face in entering and retaining employment. My Department provides a range of employment supports for disabled people in that regard.

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, a service that offers a professional job-matching service, on-going support and advice and information on employment supports for disabled people.

In July 2022, my Department launched Early Engagement. The scheme aims to proactively engage with young disabled people or those in the early stages of disability or illness about options for education, training or employment. Over 33,000 people have been contacted and over 4,300 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 disabled people into employment through 57 local, regional and national projects. So far, 4,005 people have engaged with the programme and it aims to support over 13,000 disabled people over its lifetime.

The Wage Subsidy Scheme supports employers to hire disabled people through a subsidy. In August 2024, my Department published a review of the scheme to make it more accessible and flexible. 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. In June this year, we launched the revamped scheme. A media campaign to raise awareness of this very beneficial scheme for employers and employees followed the launch.

Notwithstanding these improvements, the Government recognises that more needs to be done to support disabled people 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 recently launched the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People 2025-2030. This strategy prioritises a cross-government approach and my Department, alongside the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment will lead the employment pillar, focused on improving access to the workplace for disabled people.

These commitments will be advanced over the lifetime of the Government in light of the prevailing policy and budgetary context.