Improved grant funding is to be made available to employers and individuals to help them to adapt premises or purchase equipment with a view to supporting people with disabilities in the workplace.
Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys will launch the new Work and Access programme on Tuesday in Athlone, where she will announce a range of financial supports intended to help people with disabilities get into or continue in employment.
Companies and other employers will be able to apply for up to €2,500 for a workplace needs assessment and up to €25,000 to carry out workplace adaptations intended to facilitate employees with disabilities.
The workers will be able to apply for up to €12,500 to help with the purchase of personal assistance equipment and additional funding will be made available for specialist work coaches and personal readers.
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“I know many disabled people face barriers in the workplace when getting a job,” said Ms Humphreys.
“Work and Access is about removing those barriers. It offers a wide range of practical supports and funding.
“If we want to support more people with disabilities to enter the workforce, we need to make sure that our workplaces and premises welcome them and enable them to do the best job possible,” she said.
The new grants are significantly higher than those that have been available under existing programmes.
The announcement follows on from the launch late last year of the Workability programme which, it was said, would have a budget of €36.3 million over the 2024-2028 time period.
Since then, a total of 56 voluntary and charitable organisations have been signed up to a scheme intended to help people with disabilities get back into employment, mainly through the provision of education and training opportunities but also by way of other practical supports.
In April, the Minister had to abandon plans to link different levels of social protection payments to assessments of different individuals’ ability to work.
The proposal had prompted considerable criticism from disability groups and activists and Ms Humphreys said the Government would look at other ways of addressing the issue of Ireland’s relatively low rates of participation in the workforce by people with disabilities.
A report by the European Disability Forum (EDF) found that the average rate of employment for people with disabilities in the European Union was 51 per cent, compared with 32.6 per cent in Ireland. People with disabilities in Ireland are half as likely to be in employment as other of working age and just 15 per cent of women with disabilities are in full-time employment.
The number of people receiving disability allowance grew by 55 per cent in the decade to 2022, when total payments were €2 billion.
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