Joint Committee on Disability Matters debate -
Wednesday, 1 May 2024

The purpose of today's meeting is to continue our discussion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, at local level. We are joined by representatives from the Public Appointments Service, PAS, including Ms Margaret McCabe, chief executive officer, Ms Aoife Lyons, senior psychologist, and Ms Siobhán McKenna, head of equality, diversity and inclusion. From SOLAS, we are joined by Ms Roisin Doherty, director, and Ms Ivica Milicevic, manager of learner support. We are also joined by representatives from the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, Ms Audrey Cahill, director general, Ms Gwendolen Morgan, registrar, and Ms Derval Monahan, director of corporate services.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person or entity outside the House in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to identifying a person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction. Members are reminded of the same long-standing parliamentary practice and that if they are contributing online, they must be within the confines of Leinster House complex. Without further ado, I invite Ms McCabe to make her opening remarks.

I have been requested by the committee to discuss the role of the Public Appointments Service, PAS, in supporting the development of equal opportunities for people with disabilities in employment in Ireland. PAS is the recruitment and resourcing service provider for client organisations in the civil and public service and is responsible for the sourcing, assessment and delivery of quality candidates to those clients. PAS is required to work within the codes of practice of the Commission for Public Service Appointments, CPSA, and the Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Act 2004, under which we must ensure that "standards of probity, merit, equity and fairness" are met in all of our recruitment processes.

We seek to achieve fair and valid recruitment and assessment processes. In our strategy, we set out to be "recognised as a centre of excellence in recruitment, trusted by those we serve". Equality, diversity and inclusion, EDI, is a core theme throughout our strategy and in achieving our goals. We are fully committed to equality of opportunity for all and ensuring routes to career opportunities are accessible to all potential candidates. We have taken action in a number of key areas. We launched our EDI strategy in 2021, outlining three key change areas of focus to ensure inclusive recruitment for all candidates.

As the centralised recruiter for the public service and Civil Service, we have a key role in supporting our clients to build a public sector workforce that embraces inclusion and reflects the growing diversity of wider Irish society. To achieve our goals in this area we established an EDI unit, led by an externally recruited EDI specialist. The EDI unit includes a disability champion who offers advice and support internally in PAS and externally by answering any candidate queries. The disability champion can supportively discuss any facet of the process with candidates and facilitates access for those with disabilities. Reasonable accommodation supports put in place to aid disabled candidates to perform to the best of their ability during the recruitment process are a key part of this work. We have worked to continually improve the reasonable accommodations process across all stages of our recruitment process from application to assessment and assignment.

In order to ensure all candidates can apply for public service roles through publicjobs.ie, we maintain an accessible website and provide a range of support material for potential candidates in relation to accessibility and reasonable accommodations. We have made extensive efforts to develop practices and procedures that support those with disabilities in gaining employment in the public sector and adopt a mature approach to assessing candidates with disabilities and assessing their reasonable accommodations. We have a high level of professional expertise in this area, with a team of work and organisational psychologists in place. We train all our board members in all areas of best practice across all nine areas of equality legislation. We developed e-learning modules on unconscious bias and interviewing candidates with disabilities to ensure that our board members have the required training to allow them to assess all candidates fairly. An external audit of the processes used by PAS found that PAS can be considered an exemplar in much of the provision it makes for candidates with disabilities.

A recent review of data was conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, into data held by PAS on candidates who declared a disability in the application and assignment stage from 2019 to 2021. It confirmed that candidates with disabilities are under-represented at all stages of our process, but that those who do apply are successful, proportionately. Some 2.8% of applications received between 2019 and 2021 were from individuals who self-identified as having a disability, with 2.6% of assignees declaring a disability, well below the representation of people with a disability in the working population as a whole. Our research shows that candidates with disabilities perform just as well as candidates without disabilities across our assessment processes and while our aim is to maintain those standards, we recognise that we need to improve our attraction rates for disabled candidates.

To combat the under-representation of candidates with disabilities, we have long supported the delivery of AHEAD’s well-established willing able and mentoring, WAM, programme and the Oireachtas work learning, OWL, work placement programme. More recently, we have taken a co-design approach to reimagining the reasonable accommodations process for candidates with disabilities, focusing on the assignment and on-boarding stage. Project partners, Tilting the Lens, a disability-led consultancy, brought more than 100 people from 30 organisations across the civil and public sector together to participate in a collaborative design methodology, one that prioritised the experiences and voices of disabled colleagues. This group included clients, candidates, design experts, disability advocates and unions. Two Civil Service-wide town hall meetings were convened as part of this project with more than 700 employees in attendance. The resulting blueprint for welcoming and supporting disabled employees in the Civil Service and public service addresses key challenges identified at the assignment and on-boarding stages. The blueprint includes nine recommendations in the areas of people and culture, processes and systems, and policy and governance. They are designed to help public bodies implement and report on transparent actions in order to achieve long-term positive change in the assignment and on-boarding of candidates with disabilities.

A large number of the recommendations are outside the direct control of PAS, but we have identified Departments and units that will be able to implement some of these recommendations. A number of key recommendations are directly relevant to PAS and relate to how we can improve and streamline the candidate experience across the recruitment process and optimise the assignment experience. The Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform has already begun to implement some of the recommendations relevant to it, including a disability policy audit and a review of the role of the disability liaison officer, DLO.

Some 22 % of people declared a disability in the last census. If we are to be a truly representative workforce, one that reflects the reality of Irish society, we need to get better at encouraging and supporting people with disabilities to access meaningful careers in the public sector. PAS is committed to playing its part in this collective effort.

On behalf of SOLAS, I thank the Chair and committee members for the opportunity to speak about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, at a local level and on employment.

SOLAS is Ireland's state agency responsible for further education and training. Our vision is to power the potential of individuals, communities and enterprise through lifelong learning and workforce transformation. Transforming Learning, the national further education strategy for 2020 to 2024, sets out an ambitious vision for further education based on three strategic pillars, namely, building skills, fostering inclusion and facilitating pathways. Easier access, simplified pathways, consistent learner experience and a stronger identity are all key themes of the strategy.

The learner base of further education saw growth by some 17% between 2022 and 2023. Indeed, one in ten adults in Ireland was engaged in further education activity last year, including apprenticeships, our construction skills certification schemes and other further education courses. Working with the 16 education and training boards, ETBs, across the country, further education is available in every community in Ireland and offers individuals, regardless of any previous level of education, a pathway to take them as far as they want to go.

The further education sector is committed to supporting the development of equal opportunities for people with disabilities in employment by providing high-quality, more inclusive and flexible education and training programmes and supports tailored to meet the needs of persons with disabilities. To ensure this commitment is met, the further education sector aligns to a range of inclusion strategies, national and international, which seek to progress towards a learner-centred approach. As fostering inclusion of learners is a key pillar of the further education strategy for 2020 to 2024, the actions taken by the sector are shaped by these strategies.

I will turn to disability supports in further education. The further education sector welcomes all learners and students, including persons with disabilities who choose to avail of specific disability supports. Disability supports are available to participants in all further education programmes. Funding for these programmes is disbursed under the general individual programme and learner support headings. Within further education, a broad range of supports is provided through the education and training boards to support the participation of all learners, including those with disabilities. The provision includes both accredited and unaccredited courses.

As well as universally designed supports, persons with disabilities can choose to avail of individualised supports. A few examples are additional one-to-one support, where necessary; adaptive technologies, such as screen-reading software; the provision of a reader or interpreter service; the provision of a reader or scribe or extra time during examinations; the provision of preferred learning-style identification and learning to learn programmes; and the adult education guidance and information service.

I will move on to universal design for learning. To meet the needs of all learners through an inclusive approach, the principles of universal design have been embedded across all further education provision. Universal design for learning principles and practices can help practitioners to support learning variability and reduce barriers to learning by building flexibility, accessibility, the learner voice and choice into the fabric of the learning interactions they design. Applying universal design principles means offering multiple ways of engagement, representation, action and expression, providing necessary accommodations to remove obstacles to learning and providing, where required, one-to-one support and assistive technologies to support differentiated Learning. To support the roll-out of best practices at the local level, SOLAS, with partner organisations AHEAD and Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI, has published sectoral guidelines to support the implementation of universal design for learning for further education practitioners.

Turning to specialist training provision, specific further education programmes are provided for persons with a disability who wish to avail of more intensive support through specialist training providers, STPs.

A budget of €43 million is provided to education and training boards to provide specialist training across the country. More than 3,000 learners can avail of this intensive support. In 2023, over €36 million was allocated to education and training boards to provide a host of supports, including guidance, an education disadvantage fund, a specific fund for post-leaving certificate provision for persons with disabilities, psychological support, and a general allocation "learner support" fund for all learners across further education provision. Learners can also avail of one-to-one teaching on courses such as literacy, numeracy and digital skills. Other courses delivered at levels 1 to 3 on the national framework of qualifications have small class sizes of one to three learners. There are a range of courses to support those transitioning from school prior to transition year. They have team teaching and dedicated teachers for groups of 12. Many courses at levels 5 and 6 on the framework of qualifications incorporate work placements.

I will provide a few examples of supports. SOLAS and Down Syndrome Ireland have collaborated on producing a short video on the many options that further education provides for adults with Down's syndrome. A host of new courses specifically designed to support persons with Down's syndrome are now available, for example, the work skills programme in Galway and Roscommon ETB, personal development courses in City of Dublin ETB, learning through gardening in Kerry ETB, culinary operations in Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim ETB, and communication courses across all ETBs.

SOLAS is a member of the Department of Education's post-primary students transition development national steering group. The group's work focuses on planning transitions into post-school life for young persons with disabilities. This is an action under the comprehensive employment strategy. Local ETBs are members of the Dublin and Galway local transitions development and implementation groups. These groups focus on local planning transition options into post-school life for young people with disabilities. The groups are working closely with all local stakeholders to identify transition options for students with disabilities.

SOLAS launched guidelines for supporting persons with intellectual disabilities in adult literacy services in partnership with NALA and ETBI. Case studies and a background research report were published by SOLAS to support this. There has also been the launch of good practice case studies on inclusive assessment practice.

AHEAD, through SOLAS’s support, has released two new online courses for FET practitioners on its ARK platform. One is on getting started with universal design for learning and the other is on designing course layouts. ARK, which stands for “accessibility resources and know-how”, aims to improve access and support for people with disabilities in further education. It focuses on digital accessibility resources that FET practitioners can access to support their learners. Supported by SOLAS, AHEAD has also created a resource that aims to raise awareness about assistive technologies and guide people through a wide range of the ones available.

This year, SOLAS has supported the Dyslexia Association of Ireland in developing a new adult dyslexia information booklet and expanding the adult dyslexia hub with additional video resources. This work will include further levels of the structured literacy programme, which is a free literacy learning programme based on the science of reading. In addition, videos on strategies and assistive technologies to support functional literacy in further education and workplace settings will be developed.

Through support from SOLAS, the Irish Deaf Society will offer courses to deaf adults and provide Irish Sign Language courses to more than 700 persons this year.

Further education continues to play a critical role in fostering inclusion and providing access to education for those under-represented in further education and training. SOLAS will continue working with key stakeholders across the FET sector to ensure that further education and training provides inclusive learning environments.

I hope this has provided a brief overview of SOLAS's role in supporting persons with disabilities in employment. I thank the committee for its time and look forward to further discussion.

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it and for the opportunity to outline the important work of the Workplace Relations Commission, its statutory functions and, in particular, how the WRC is supporting and assisting people with disabilities to access WRC services to assist them in realising their rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in particular Article 27 on the right to work and employment.

I was newly appointed as Director General of the WRC this February. I am accompanied by officials of the WRC: Ms Derval Monahan, director of corporate services, and Ms Gwendolen Morgan, director of legal.

As the committee will be aware, the WRC plays an invaluable role in Irish society by delivering its core services in a fair, consistent and independent manner. It interacts with people and businesses in many ways. Its services help to maintain industrial relations stability nationally; mediate and adjudicate in individual disputes; raise awareness of and improve industrial and employment relations generally; promote, monitor and enforce compliance with employment standards; and provide recourse for people who feel they have been discriminated against in the delivery of services more generally.

In order to deliver our services, the commission has five fully accessible offices, located in Dublin, Cork, Ennis, Sligo and Carlow. Following significant investment in recent years, the full range of commission services are available in each location. For example, the hearing loop system for those with hearing impairments is available at all of our sites and each office can facilitate physical and virtual hearings. Remote or hybrid hearings have proven to be an effective accommodation for some service users, depending on their individual needs. Others prefer face-to-face engagement, and this, too, is accommodated.

The commission has a staffing complement of over 215 full-time equivalent civil servants, who are employees of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. These resources are supplemented by a further 42 external adjudication officers. The adjudication service investigates the disputes, grievances and claims that individuals or groups of workers make under the employment legislation listed in Schedule 5 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 and under the equality legislation, including the Equal Status Acts, Employment Equality Acts and a range of other employment statutes. All decisions are published on the WRC website and many are reported in the media.

Of last year's 6,263 cases, comprising 12,000 complaints submitted, 13% fell within the equality law sphere encompassing service providers. The legal team provides regular guidance and training to our adjudication officers on equality law matters and related themes, such as unconscious bias, reasonable accommodations, mental health issues and the Equal Treatment Bench Book. We have also published a number of guidance documents to simplify adjudications, including a guide to evidence for lay litigants, witness guidelines and the oath or affirmation translated into ten languages. The legal team regularly participates in EU training to ensure that the adjudication division is aware of emerging trends and the latest jurisprudence in the area of equality and disability rights.

The inspectorate of the WRC conducts workplace inspections to ensure employers’ compliance with employment law in the State, with some 8,670 employers inspected in 2022 and 2023. The commission’s information and customer service unit provides information to employees, employers and citizens generally. For the committee’s information, we have set out some data points in our detailed submission. The commission offers mediation in individual disputes in person and-or by phone or video conference, depending on the nature of the matter or the parties’ needs. Our mediation services are delivered in person by default, with any reasonable accommodations or requests for virtual mediation activated where needed.

The commission works with trade unions, employer bodies and equality and other stakeholders in publishing codes of practice. This year, the WRC published the code of practice on the right to request remote working and the right to request flexible working, which includes a number of equality considerations at its core. By way of example, in consideration of a request for remote or other form of flexible working, an employee’s disabilities or his or her caring responsibilities for a disabled person may be at issue. One of the aims of the underpinning legislation is to increase participation in the labour market for those with disabilities and caring responsibilities.

In its invitation, the committee indicated that it would be considering how the commission supported the development of equal opportunities for people with disabilities in employment. With the committee's permission, I would like to outline some of the supports provided by the WRC.

Employment equality legislation not only prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities across all forms of employment, but also imposes obligations on employers to provide reasonable accommodation to persons with disabilities. Additional legal obligations are placed on the public sector under the Disability Act 2005, including a minimum requirement that 4.5% of employees be persons with disabilities. While its HR function and associated tasks, such as recruitment, lie with the parent Department, the commission plays a key role in providing supports to its own staff with disabilities and a pivotal role in terms of adjudicating on cases engaging these rights as set out below.

Turning to referrals under the Equal Status Acts, the latter make it unlawful to discriminate when providing goods and services. These are not employment-related cases. In 2023, some 428 referrals, citing 733 specific grounds, were received by the adjudication service under the Equal Status Act 2000. Referrals on the ground of disability remain to be the highest received over the past three years, amounting to 23%, or 170, of the referrals received in 2023.

On referrals under the Employment Equality Acts, in 2023, 1,045 cases were referred to the WRC under the employment equality legislation, citing 1,458 specific grounds of discrimination. The majority of referrals in 2023 under this Act were under the ground of disability at 331, followed by gender at 322. However, this varies from year to year from a thematic perspective and there are not obvious trends as such.

The WRC is conscious of the need to continually upskill our staff and adapt its services to those with a wide range of disabilities. The WRC's parent Department, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, has provided staff with in-house lunch and learn training sessions on a range of topics including disability awareness, inclusive language and cultural awareness training. A specific training course on the IHREC public sector duty is also available to all our staff.

The WRC was also represented on the Department’s equality, diversity and inclusion working group to develop its new equality, diversity and inclusion strategy. In March 2023, the Department, including the WRC, which accounts of 20% of the overall Department staff, was awarded the silver investors in diversity EDI mark from the Irish Centre for Diversity. The accreditation process included an assessment of the Department’s HR and EDI related policies, initiatives, training and programmes, as well as an all-staff survey. In line with this strategy, the WRC is aligned with the Department in the process of becoming a JAM card accredited organisation. Our ambition is to continue to cascade the training this year to cover 80% of our employees internally.

As outlined in our customer service charter, the WRC has an experienced disability access officer in place who is available to assist WRC users on request. The access officer is also involved in overseeing individual accommodation requests, such as the booking of Irish Sign Language interpreters and arranging for materials to be translated into Braille using our WRC Braille printer and sent to visually impaired parties to accommodate their needs. In addition, the access officer is continuously upskilling and has completed a wide range of training courses to support their role, which relate in part or in full to accessibility and disability issues.

In addition to assisting individuals directly, the WRC website is a vital source of information and an interface with WRC service users. Since the launch of the revised website in 2019, the site has been regularly independently reviewed and improved to ensure it complies fully with all web standards in terms of the structure, layout and content and that it follows web standards laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium and the National Disability Authority. The WRC is currently engaging with the National Disability Authority on any further improvements of the accessibility of the website and we are pleased that in our most recent review, our score is at 80%. The WRC website is translatable into 108 different languages, and publications specific to migrant workers have been translated into up to ten key languages.

The WRC efforts to accommodate all nature of disability are robust and continue to evolve and improve. However, we are dependent on notice of acute or specific needs that require significant adjustment outside of those already outlined. Our complaint form is formulated to ensure there is sufficient space to do this from the outset of the engagement with the WRC. The WRC has also published a number of guidance animations on the website to advise users of the WRC services and we have outlined these in detail in the supplied statement.

As part of its research function, the commission published a comprehensive review of its jurisprudence across equality and employment law looking at 2020 cases and analysing average awards directions, such as equality training and representation. This complements the case summaries published in the annual reports, which include emerging equality matters.

I hope I have provided the committee with a sense of the many ways in which the WRC is assisting and supporting people with disabilities to access its services. Our service users are at the centre of all services provided and we take our commitment to serve all persons equally very seriously. I thank the Cathaoirleach and the members of the committee for their kind attention and am happy to assist the committee in its deliberations in any way I can.

I thank the witnesses for coming and for their presentations. I commend all the good work that the different organisations are doing in ensuring that they are improving their services and by engaging with various organisations around disability.

I have a question for all of the witnesses. How many people with disabilities are employed within their organisations? Those people can then identify the barriers that exist and can assist others who are applying to or using the services of the organisations.

Accessibility is important. When we think of accessibility, we frequently think of the built space, but it is actually about digital accessibility, easy-read documents and so on. The NDA monitors compliance with web content accessibility guidelines. All of the organisations here were scored with a percentage. What are they doing to improve accessibility?

It was correctly identified that candidates with disabilities are under-represented at all stages of the process employed by PAS. What measures is the organisation taking to address that? As was said, 22% of people identified as having a disability in the most recent census. That is not reflected in the context of employment figures. In fact, we have one of the worst employment rates in the EU for persons with disabilities.

When we had SOLAS in before the committee previously, I was concentrating on apprenticeship. At the time, people with disabilities were very under-represented in that regard. Has the position improved? Is data kept, monitored and addressed? It was also stated that a budget of €43 million is provided to ETBs to fund specialist training provision and that 3,000 learners can avail of that intensive support. Is that budget being fully utilised? Do 3,000 people avail of the intensive support? Could or should the budget be increased? Is it sufficient? Are people informed enough about the position in this regard?

On the WRC, often cases are taken by disabled persons against a business or employer. A business or employer would be able to afford legal representation whereas a disabled person frequently may not be able to. We know there is a significant cost to disability. That includes for those who are working because sometimes that adds to the cost of disability. Correct me if I am wrong, but they are not able to avail of free legal aid. Is that a huge barrier to them bringing a case and seeing it through?

On the first question about how many people are employed, as state, ours is an agency of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The overall employment rate relating to staff in the Department who declared having a disability is 7%. We do not specifically have the data of every individual who has a disability in the WRC, given that there are hidden and obvious ones. We have people who require accommodations such as the Braille printer we referred to or spaces for their assistance dogs. We have those accommodations in place for people in our information centre in Carlow in particular. Where there is a physical need and it is obvious, we know. However, we unfortunately do not have data on those who have a hidden disability and have not requested specific reasonable accommodation.

All our sites are fully accessible to people with physical disabilities, visual impairments or whatever disability someone may present with. We need to know in advance if anything outside of the standard accessibility measures we have in place is required and, on the special accommodation section of the form, we have an unlimited amount of space for people to fill the data in. We will accommodate all manners of request, such as the light might need to be low in room, we might need an Irish Sign Language interpreter, we might need the parties to speak slower and break within a number of sentences and so on. It can get very detailed. Every specific accommodation is provided once we are of it in advance. When we are not aware of it in advance, our staff are well seasoned at dealing with it. Dealing with the equality legislation is not new to us. Our staff are well trained and react well on the day to support anybody who arrives with something we did not realise would need support. From that perspective, we have a great deal in place.

The Deputy is right that there is not a free legal aid system. However, 50% of all parties come unrepresented – both employers and employees.

It does not necessarily ever present as an issue where somebody with a disability would be at a disadvantage. In fact, I would say that our trained adjudicators, who are customer-facing people in that regard, would make more provision for the individual that has a disability and make sure that where a break is needed or translation is required at the last minute, we have the services available to us. I think that is it.

Some 7% of the people in our organisation have declared disabilities. As Ms Cahill said, however, there are many people who do not declare their disabilities. When they carry out our internal surveys, we sometimes discover that more people will declare as time goes on.

Regarding accessibility, we have a disability liaison officer on the staff who looks after anybody who has a disability or particular needs. It is fair to say that they are well looked after. We have whatever is necessary because we have had people with disabilities on our staff for many years. Obviously, we recruit as well so we have to be very well trained up in how we treat people and on what people need.

In the context of our website, four areas were identified last year. Each year there is something new identified but we covered off all those areas and they have all been addressed through that audit I mentioned. It brought up some areas as well and they were covered.

What are we doing as an organisation to increase the percentage of people applying? We are very conscious that people do not declare when they apply that they have a disability because it may well be a hidden disability. However, people are getting better at that now and are becoming more comfortable saying that they have a disability. From our point of view and from looking at our staff, we think it is probably three to four times higher than our declared figure. We have a very good relationship with all the disability support organisations who promote us as well, and we are trying to encourage people to apply and take that chance. We have set targets in our own corporate strategy, NUA26, to increase by 20% the numbers applying and being assigned under the whole EDI area, which includes disability. Is that all of the questions answered? I thank the committee.

I am very familiar with the further education element, and that is what I particularly want to focus on but I will come back to the other two questions.

The specialist training providers were mentioned. I just checked it there, and the budget for 2023 was €40 million. The Deputy touched on a really core aspect when asking whether there is enough awareness of it and whether there could be more provision. We find that many young learners want to be involved in a fully inclusive education system. They do not want to be segregated; they want to be in the mainstream, as such. We are working with the ETBs to try and integrate that specialist training provision into the core of further education, so that it is not a separate provision as such. We find that then that we have learners who are perhaps more keen to go into the mainstream, but at all times where there is a particular need, people would avail of specialist training providers. I would encourage anybody, if they are accessing further education, to contact the adult education guidance officers. There are 240 in the country, and they can provide one-to-one guidance as to what particular course suits your particular needs at a particular time. It is to try and get that holistic approach as opposed to segregating people into the system.

The Deputy mentioned demand for places. On what we are trying to do, for example, we worked in quite a lot of detail with regard to the adult literary service at one point. We found that people were accessing the adult literary service for ten to 15 years on an ongoing basis. What we are trying to do is to stop that flow and put in interventions early in people's lives whereby they get access to further education at an early stage and progress to employment, as opposed to having to be supported in the long term. That is why we worked with Down Syndrome Ireland this year, where we are trying to get young people into employment early on. We found in the north east that employers are actually looking for people who have accessed the adult literary service. They turn up every day. They are there all the time and they are very motivated. We are trying to make inroads into those approaches such that rather than looking at individual programmes, we look at the holistic approach. That seems to be working really well.

We have a number of programmes that are progressing people into work through Down Syndrome Ireland, and we find that works. We are also working with the head by trying to get universal design into all our programmes. We are moving from the approach where it is a deficit model to a strengths-based one, where your supports can be integrated as much as possible into the provision, and you have your own agency as opposed to having to ask for extra services. Where possible, services are integrated. That does not mean there are not individualised supports as well.

As the Deputy can see, our role is very much looking at further education. However, I am aware that the Deputy mentioned other questions, and if she does not mind, I will come back to her with some written information on those.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. I was just reflecting on this. It is such a privilege to be on any of our joint committees because we get to meet and interact with people like the witnesses who are at a very high level throughout the public service. We have had people from the private sector as well. I wanted to thank the witnesses for their time and to apologise in advance because I have to leave by 6.30 p.m. for another commitment here in the Houses.

I have some very quick questions. With regard to the Public Appointments Service, I thank the witnesses for all of the information and the statistics. I was really struck by that figure of 2.8% of people applying with a declared disability. The statistic itself was called out: 22% of the population declared themselves as having a long-standing illness. Unlike other protected categories of citizens - on the basis of LGBTQI+, ethnicity, religious formation or whatever - all of us are likely to become disabled. I think the World Health Organization tells us each of us is going to be 8% to 10%. Given that the numbers are so low, do the witnesses think there is a case to be made for radical positive discrimination, and not just targets, but that we should have set quotas to try and improve and gain greater traction on those numbers?

On the Workplace Relations Commission, I congratulate Ms Cahill on her appointment. I have many colleagues whose rights have been vindicated through the commission, so I think it does very important work. With regard to the cases taken on the grounds of disability, Ms Cahill said the number for 2023 was in or around 300. I know she is only new in her post, and maybe her colleagues could assist. I get many representations in respect of disabled citizens, and they very often follow a particular pattern. One of the recurring features is that because we do not have a rights-based approach to disability issues, it often brings the disabled person into an position whereby they have to really work harder than most to try and vindicate their rights. I know that is a very general and kind of philosophical question, but does Ms Cahill find that if we had a more rights-based approach to disability, and possibly with the full ratification of all protocols of the UNCRPD, it might ameliorate or have an impact on the number of people having to bring cases forward?

On SOLAS, I have an adult son with additional needs who is in further education. He is having a really positive experience and has great supports. He is really at the heart of that third level institution. However, I have also had representations from disabled students who find themselves almost the subject of very hostile scrutiny, where they are being actively failed by organisations on the basis of disability. It seems to me that it is almost a cultural thing. You might find a third level institution where they have a very positive culture and there are others where maybe there needs to be a little more intervention. I wonder if the witnesses have any thoughts in that regard. When you put all of the steps and the legislation in place, that is fine, but sometimes it really comes down to the culture or the values and norms for behaviour in a particular organisation.

I thank the Senator for the question. He asked whether we have a rights-based system - we do. Equality is fundamental to the employment relationship and is bedded into that relationship at a number of levels. Obviously, the Employment Equality Act is the starting point, where there is protection from direct discrimination on the grounds of disability compared to somebody who is not disabled or who has a different disability, or from indirect discrimination where a policy that is apparently neutral has a disproportionately negative effect on disabled people or a particular disabled person.

There is also the duty to make reasonable accommodations. That duty is UNCRPD based. It has flourished since the Nano Nagle decision in the Supreme Court in 2019. We had that at Luxembourg level, but the 2019 decision was the first time the Supreme Court really engaged with what that meant. It applied the social model of disability where we look at levelling the playing field and applying the duty to make reasonable accommodations in a meaningful way. This also involves engaging with people in a common-sense way to ascertain what ways an employer can modify a job description, or provide flexible hours or occasional working from home. Those kind of adjustments are not major but can allow somebody to flourish in the workplace.

There is protection at the recruitment and dismissal stage from being treated less favourably on grounds of disability, or being victimised for raising a complaint or helping somebody to raise a complaint. There is also a positive action component and equal pay that are not used so often. I am happy to expand on that but I do not want to eat into others' time.

On the question of targets and quotas, Ms McCabe mentioned that PAS has targets in its strategy. I would love to see people have targets that would drive this kind of work in their organisations. We do not set policy for the rest of the Civil Service in that space; that is the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. That Department is focused on disability inclusion this year.

We used to have confined competitions for people with disabilities. We do not do them any more. I am not entirely sure why. My concern about those competitions is the backlash against people whereby it is perceived that they somehow had an easier ride in. I would much rather see us make our processes and policies much more inclusive, which will support people with disabilities as they come through our processes and go on further through the Civil Service in various guises. We had an engagement strategy across the whole Civil Service of approximately 45,000 people just before Christmas. As I understand it, about 12% of people identified as having a disability in that engagement. That is three or four times higher than the number who declare coming in to the Civil Service. We only do about one third of the recruitment so not everybody comes through our processes. Our data is only reflective of the competitions we do.

We are allowed to take positive action under equality legislation. I do not think affirmative action and more quotas are currently permitted under legislation. That does not mean it should not change. The current situation we are in, however, is that it is more about that positive action approach. We do things such as interview clinics and application clinics for under-represented groups to demystify the whole Civil Service process, which is quite a mystery unless you are in it. We get very good and positive feedback from that.

On the programmes we have, we had an 80% success rate for the WAM programme for supporting graduates into permanent roles. They got to do a ten-month internship to acclimatise themselves to the service and the type of tasks. They had two in-work assessments because the best predictor of whether someone can do a job is if he or she is actually doing it. Once they successfully come through that, they get to compete to the same standard that everybody else does for an executive officer or clerical officer role and if they are successful, they stay in the role they are in.

It is more about finding different ways into the service for people with disabilities. Not everybody will nail it in a 45-minute interview or an online assessment test. It is about how we find methods of attracting people with the skills we need and testing their skills in slightly different ways. The challenge then is how we scale those up and roll them out across other Departments.

I will answer the Senator's question on how to have that consistent learner experience across all provision, given there is further education provision in nearly every community. It is a fairly complex process. As was said, it can be built through a rights and legislative base, but the approach we have taken is to bring people with us on that journey, and for us to go on a journey with practitioners in the system. That is where we move to the universal design approach. We fund and support the organisation AHEAD to support the sector. We find that really helps because we are able to build that support at local level. We have a resource there and that national thinking and national best practice. We worked for two or two and a half years with all our stakeholders to put in place those universal design guidelines. We find that is changing the dial, although there is certainly a lot more to be done. It is about how we can ensure that consistent approach, given that things are changing all the time.

The things we are doing include the universal design guidelines, as I said, and funding support organisations to build that capacity. We are also working with the Dyslexia Association of Ireland. Another example is Down Syndrome Ireland, as I mentioned, which, through SOLAS, funds a number of support workers who go out into every single ETB. They do two visits a year to all ETBs giving support and telling people what resources are available, and quite a lot of resources and support systems are available, to ensure, for example, that people with Down's syndrome have access to further education. That seems to be working quite well. Any guidelines we developed are part of the funding criteria for ETBs. Any best practice guidelines that are available, such as the intellectual disability guidelines for persons accessing adult literacy or the universal design guidelines, are all part of the funding requirements the ETBs report on.

We are working on a new initiative but, again, we are trying not to reinvent the wheel. We are working with higher education with regard to facilitating and accessing some of the great supports it has available, such as a universal design support badge for those outside teaching practice. This is not just for the person in front of the student but for those who are doing the payroll or accessing a learner the first day he or she comes to register. Staff in those areas can have a universal design support badge to indicate they are trained in this particular area. That is about getting at hearts and changing minds. There is also cross-department work. We mentioned the committee that has a number of pilots in Galway and Dublin. It is working with young people who wish to progress out of education to open up opportunities across all of their local communities, not just education but all the different options available. That is a very interesting pilot.

Our main task is to make sure there is a consistent learner experience across the sector. We are working on a framework guide. We are saying there should be a resource in every single ETB that is a learner support or learner experience hub where all learners can be supported. It is about deregulating the system as well. A good and very clear budget is available to ETBs. They should use that budget, which can be very flexibly delivered to learners. Many ETBs have set up learner support funds in order to support learners because a budget is there and if a learner needs something, it can just be put in place. It does not have to be a very complex process.

As I said, there is an awful lot more we can do. I would be very pleased, if members think there is anything else we should be doing, to link in with them.

I thank our guests for coming today and for their very informative and interesting presentations. I have a fair idea of what SOLAS, the WRC and PAS do. Even after 25 years in politics, I have no huge involvement in public appointments. That is the way it should be. I thank our witnesses for that.

As a politician, I want to put on the record that it is good to see integrity and impartiality in the systems.

I have a few questions regarding Solas. Will the representatives discuss the service's complaints process? What percentage of services are available to people with disabilities?

Will the Public Appointments Service representatives discuss how they reach out to diverse candidate pools, and positive action measures for certain groups of people to enable access to employment?

The Workplace Relations Commission received an accessibility score of 34% in the NDA's monitoring report of the EU web accessibility directive. Will the representatives discuss this matter and also how the organisation is improving the score? The witnesses will have plenty of time. I see there is a vote in the Dail.

I think the vote is just on an amendment and we will be back soon, so for the duration of the vote I will ask Senator McGreehan to take the Chair. She and Senator Flynn can continue the meeting with the Senators until the Deputies come back if that is okay with everybody. Will the witnesses respond to Deputy Feighan's comments and we will take it from there? Their responses will be on the record.

I thank the witnesses for attending. The issue of people with disabilities and employment is a critically important. If I have learned anything from this committee, it is around my language and that sometimes there is no way just by looking at a person to know if that person has a disability or not so I want to put that straight for the record. Sometimes it does not come out very well when I speak about people with disabilities or disabled people.

There are big decision-makers out there who make decisions about people who are disabled and people with disabilities. The people who are impacted by or affected with disabilities are not around these tables. We need to be very mindful of that. There is very little participation or representation in the Houses of the Oireachtas for people with disabilities and we have never had a disabled Member of any of the Houses who has been a wheelchair user.

Having one Member, and even the conversation about how we had one Member, is not enough during the history of politics in this country. To put the record straight one person who was a Member of the Houses of the Oireachtas was also a wheelchair user. I know it was only recently that the Houses and the AV room were made wheelchair-friendly. I know this committee meeting remit is not about the Houses of the Oireachtas, it is about employment for people with disabilities but it is important we start here and say we need more representation of people with disabilities in politics and when making these big decisions around worker relations. I had to pop out of the meeting for a few minutes but 300 cases were taken in 2023, if I am correct. It is absolutely appalling in today's Ireland that there is still that level of discrimination against people with disabilities and people who are disabled.

Quotas are brilliant. We have a lot of quotas for women's participation in society but we are falling when it comes to the participation of people with disabilities and disabled people. Senator Clonan spoke about positive discrimination and it can be very positive and create good opportunities to support people in reaching their full potential. It can also be negative. We can set people up to fail. We can make mules out of people being there because they are disabled or have a disability and that is not fair. When we talk about intersectionality and people with disabilities it is about making sure the person can reach his or her full potential in any employment.

The committee visited the National Learning Network on Kylemore Road in Ballyfermot and saw how it created opportunities for people with disabilities to not only learn but to have a paid role. That was important. People in that service worked in recycling and it was by choice. A lot of the jobs for people with Down's syndrome and for people with disabilities are packing shelves. We need to rethink that because people with disabilities can do so much more than just pack shelves or do gardening. Do not get me wrong, many people want to do that but there should be more opportunities available.

As for Solas, I know from attending Ballyfermot College of Further Education that it is brilliant when it comes to supporting people with disabilities to reach their full potential. I have not visited many of Solas's further and higher education colleges but if they are all like Ballyfermot College of Further Education they are doing a brilliant job. It is about financial support and getting workers in there because it is not just about concrete it is about the support.

How can we support people with disabilities to take discrimination cases against employers? If someone is discriminated against in a shop or is attacked because of their disability how do we protect them? I know for the Traveller community if we experience racism, discrimination or are refused entry to a public place we go through the Workplace Relations Commission. Is it the same for people with disabilities? If a person with a disability is refused access or entrance into a public place such as a pub or club does he or she have to go through the Workplace Relations Commission? It does not support people who have experienced discrimination or hatred or have been denied access to services. I know the Workplace Relations Commission relates to employment but while the representatives are here it is an important question to ask.

How can we really bring about meaningful change for disabled people in this country and move beyond packing shelves and the attitude of "Aren't we a great organisation, we have a person with a disability working with us"? How do we support people with dyslexia who are working as public servants? A lot of the time someone could be well able for the job but face obstacles such as with technology or not being able to read or write like their colleagues. How do we support them to be successful in employment?

I know other Deputies and Senators referred to a lot of statistics and whatnot.

For me, people may have disabilities but you see the person first. We should be able to support people to get employment. The situation for disabled people is similar to that of the Traveller community in that we get people through the education system but we do not see them working. When I say people with disabilities I mean wheelchair users and young adults with Down's syndrome or autism. These people are well able to work in, say, a solicitor's office or as a secretary. How can we ensure people have opportunities to reach their full potential? If the witnesses cannot answer all my questions or respond to my comments now, I ask them to do so by email.

To respond to some of the statements and questions, from a WRC perspective, our remit is to ensure that where rights have been infringed, the case is heard and the legislation is upheld. That is the boundary of our remit. From the perspective of ensuring that we are a fully accessible organisation, we go above and beyond, and have done, to ensure no matter who comes through the door or what category they do or do not fall into, that they are given a fair hearing and their case is adjudicated on with a lot of empathy, particularly where it is somebody who struggles with complex language, etc.

I speak not only as the director general of the WRC but as a mother of a 20-year-old girl who has Down's syndrome and cerebral palsy. My daughter is in the workplace and works in a solicitor's office, as mentioned by the Senator. My daughter's strength is digital use of a computer, so she is in the right job for her. In the grand scheme of society, there are people who can work with computers and others who cannot, notwithstanding whether they are disabled. Packing shelves in, say, a supermarket suits some people but not others. My daughter cannot walk so she could not pack shelves but we are lucky that she has been given an education opportunity through the programmes outlined by the representatives of SOLAS and continues to get that education. The lived experience is that the possibilities exist but not at the level at which society might like to see them - that applies also to the quotas and statistics we look at - but they are definitely there. Where there is ability, there are many agencies working hard with families like mine to make sure that these adults are given opportunities. I think it is important to say that.

Deputy Feighan called out that the WRC website having an accessibility score of 34%. To give some insight into that, when the NDA does a snapshot it is at a point in time. It is a fact that PDFs are not very accessible for people who may have challenges, whether intellectual or otherwise. That is a big piece of work that the WRC has commenced over the last 12 months in particular. Our e-complaint form, the most recent iteration of that, is about to be launched. The snapshot of 34% was an issue with coloured banners as opposed to an accessibility issue in general. We are glad to say, as part of an ongoing process, we had a further review only yesterday and our score is now 80%. That is not the full review but the snapshot review is now at 80%.

Again, I speak from a perspective of being new to the organisation and having a fresh lens on this. We have reviewed these things, even during my first nine weeks in this role, and consulted our staff and stakeholders on all of these projects. The ability to put complex processes into visual animations, as we are doing, cannot be underestimated. The WRC has started the process around those visual animations, which will help people not only with disability but with language challenges or adult literacy issues. We will continue to do that but we are really pleased the project is going well. As of yesterday, our minor snapshot had reached 80% and I hope it will get better from there.

Deputy Feighan asked how the Public Appointments Service reaches out to diverse pools of people. We are very involved with all the various disability organisations. Our poster person, Ms McKenna, is here. Since Siobhán has joined us, she has really upped our visibility in the outside world. People can work very hard within their organisations but they need to get out there and talk to people. It is safe to say that Siobhán is run off her feet. She speaks to loads of different people and groups.

I could not agree more with Senator Flynn on having disabled people at the table. Over the last year, we have worked very closely with Sinéad Burke's consultancy Tilting the Lens to co-design a process with some of our disabled colleagues in the Civil Service and also outside the Civil Service to see how things are done differently in the private sector in this area. We had over 100 people feed into this process. Some were disabled and some were not. Some were managing people with disability and some were not. It involved the public sector and Civil Service. We had to centre the voice of persons with a disability because they are the experts in their disability and the experts in their reasonable accommodation. That seems like a no-brainer because designing anything without that input, which happens all the time, as has been said, seems pointless to us. We spent six months consulting. There were some very difficult conversations and sessions at which colleagues were in tears about their experience in the Civil Service and public sector, which I was unprepared for, frankly. The trauma helped us come up with a really good set of guidelines which is all about supporting the disabled person and recognising that each disabled person is unique. We speak about them like they are a homogenous group but they are not. We have seen a shift from physical disabilities to the neurodivergent but also mental health issues. For example, 40% of the reasonable accommodation requests we get are from the neurodiverse people who need support, whether they have dyslexia, Asperger's syndrome or whatever. That is a shift from years ago when people sought to have an accessible building because most buildings are now accessible.

Yes. We heard quite a bit about people who are in jobs, in our service, and do not anything meaningful because people have decided what they can and cannot do and have just left them. Because they are in permanent jobs, the organisations cannot get rid of them but they are not doing meaningful work. It is not just about encouraging these people into our service, it is about allowing them to use the skills and abilities they have to help us shape services for everybody else. We are going to do more of that and make sure we have our disabled colleagues and candidates in the room when we are talking about processes that affect them.

My colleague, Mr. Milicevic, will answer in the main. To follow on from what the Senator said, a phrase that we in SOLAS use is to have high expectations for everyone. If that is the culture, you then achieve against that. SOLAS looks at provision from the learners' perspective. That is our particular focus.

I will respond to one or two questions posed earlier.

In relation to SOLAS as an employer, the percentage of people with disabilities working in the organisation declaring disabilities was 8% in 2021 and 7% in 2022.

In relation to culture, there was a question about promoting a positive culture, one that is positive for all learners with disabilities. As we outlined earlier, we are providing indirect supports in this regard. We are supporting practitioners who, in turn, provide learners with various supports and are able to relate to them better. For example, to date, 3,211 practitioners across the education sector have been trained and obtained UDL digital badges. As we mentioned earlier, we are rolling out this approach beyond the classroom so that people working in libraries and anybody interacting with learners will be trained in the UDL principles and approach.

There was also the question about complaints. These channels are open to learners. They can voice their issues to SOLAS directly or to ETBs at local level. SOLAS also sponsors a learner voice mechanism, which is, effectively, feedback from all learners. These meet mostly in person, but we also had an online version of this during Covid. Basically, it is an opportunity for learners to tell us how FET is providing services. Generally, the feedback we get is overwhelmingly positive. Obviously, though, any issues might be picked up there as well. Our colleagues in the ETBs are working on developing learner charters. Some of them are more advanced than others, but this is another opportunity for learners to be able to access the services provided by ETBs to the best of their abilities. A number of channels, therefore, are open to learners and they are encouraged to provide their feedback.

Turning to the question about the share of services open to people with disabilities, in principle, and as we mentioned, we are aiming to mainstream as many services as possible. In principle, therefore, all services are open, but then we also have specific and special training provision for people with disabilities who get more targeted supports in the context of that particular provision. We aim, therefore, to mainstream and provide practitioners and learners with direct and indirect supports as appropriate. We are doing our best and our colleagues in FET are doing their best as well. I thank the committee.

The witnesses are all very welcome. I congratulate them on all their work. It is very clear from all the responses and the opening statements that there is a clear commitment to inclusivity and to pushing the boundaries of what we have been doing up to now and to making things better. This has come across very clearly. It is the modus operandi of this committee as well. We are all in here every week willing to be wrong, to have our minds changed, to be pushed a little bit further and to educate ourselves.

To pose a question to the representatives from the WRC first, we constantly hear of very positive work coming out of it. The public sector duty was mentioned and what IHREC is supposed to be doing. What collaboration and work, if any, has the WRC been doing with IHREC in relation to the public sector duty? I would argue that many institutions, organisations and public bodies do not uphold their obligations. I would also argue that IHREC, which has been operating since 2015, has done nothing to test this public sector duty. A case has not been taken in this regard. Any questions I direct to IHREC result in the response that it is setting up an online database. The reports sent from local authorities or other public sector bodies are just there on the website. The commission states it commits to the public sector duty, but there is no real scrutiny in this regard. Where is the WRC on this issue? Can it have a position on it? Does it have a remit to do so? What would help in this regard?

I ask this because if it were possible to help people with disabilities by pointing to a certain county council that has failed in its public sector duty to uphold what it was supposed to be doing, then we might see more cases at the WRC and see more people with disabilities taking such cases after prejudice had been directed against them. Many people have come to me in respect of the fight to get reasonable accommodations in our local authorities. They have been told to do a business case for a reasonable accommodation and then been turned down because they were told their business case was not up to scratch. They do not then get their reasonable accommodation and have to fight everything. Not being able to go to work with the reasonable accommodations means they end up being exhausted.

There is a gap here. Perhaps this is an issue the WRC can highlight. I can imagine that perhaps people have to go to it, but perhaps there can be a collaboration here between the WRC and IHREC in relation to this matter. It is important that we start to move on something we have had in place since 2015 because it is a bit like a chicken-and-egg situation. If we do not hear about something or it does not happen, well, which comes first? Someone has to be bold enough to take such a case, but doing so can be very frightening.

Turning to the witnesses from SOLAS, regarding the work it does developing courses, what work does it do with day centres, such as those run by Rehab and the Irish Wheelchair Association? I refer to establishing accredited courses. Fantastic day centres do run courses but these are not accredited. How can we start enabling these people who are in day centres and enrolled in courses to be educated in the places where they are comfortable? Is any work going on to link up SOLAS and the day centres? The State is providing enough funding for both. If we are looking to help a cohort of people with disabilities, this is where they are. I would love to know, therefore, if work is going on in this respect.

Out of pure curiosity for the public-----

Yes. If I had a disability or if I needed a reasonable accommodation, at what point of the interview process would I say this? When do I tick the box to state that I have a mental health condition or whatever? When is this disclosed to an employer? We know people are not disclosing their disabilities. I refer to enabling people to feel safe to do so. I thank the witnesses.

In the context of the WRC being a completely independent and impartial organisation, our relationship with IHREC is one where it is a key stakeholder in terms of our stakeholder engagement. This engagement is quite regular and happened as recently as last week. Its representatives come in concerning various subject matters to provide us with information in an advisory and awareness capacity. There are boundaries between the two agencies. Being new in this role, I have not had that much exposure, except to know that this engagement is there.

The other function IHREC performs for parties that are marginalised or require supports is that it will sometimes come in as a representative body and represent people at their hearings. We see this occurring in the cases of people who come in with IHREC representing them. In essence, this would be our interaction with IHREC.

It is regular. It is a key stakeholder, as are many of our other key stakeholders that improve our services.

I will take the question on reasonable accommodation. We ask candidates to indicate when they are applying if they have any reasonable accommodations and we explain why we ask that question. We ask that question because it allows us to help the candidates get through the processes as fairly as possible and make sure they perform to the best of their abilities. We are also very clear that the information is for my team, which will use it and then decide what to do. It may be the case that there can be extra time, a scribe, a reader, etc., at the assessment stage We have those accommodations. If the candidates get an interview, we will then ask for their permission to share the information with the board. Some say they do not want to share anything with the board. Others say, “Yes, please do”. We will already have provided training to our board members on assessing candidates with a disability and we could, for example, have closed captioning on the interviews if it is online. We can have extra time. We give instructions about the clarity of questions and we tell them not to give hypothetical questions, which can be hard to understand. We offer a suite of assessments to candidates. Our data shows us that it is working and the candidates are getting through. There is a stage at the end of the process where the candidates are assigned to a particular Department. In that case, we get the candidates' consent and engage with them about what they need to perform to the best of their abilities in the role. It is very clear-cut; we look for one set of information for one purpose and other sets for another in order that people can have the confidence to share that information with us. I may be making this sound perfect. It is not perfect.

Yes. We have acknowledged that we need to be very clear with our candidates about when and why we look for this information and whether we could ask for it in a better way or streamline it. It is something we are actively working on to make it as clear as we can and improve it as much as possible. That is a whistle-stop tour through the process.

There were the questions on rehabilitative training. I will come second to the issue of vocational training. The Senator mentioned our interaction with public sector duty. From our perspective, our organisation meets it in that from an internal point of view, we have our public sector duty reports and action plans, etc. From the provisions point of view - which we fund, and do not actually provide, as such - we are trying to build a universally designed system. This builds agency for the individual in order that he or she does not have to put his or her hand up as much to get individualised supports. If we wanted to be really successful, we would say that anybody who needs any support would go through a process, we would record it and it would be an achievement that we have supported that person with a disability. However, if we were to have in-built supports, and the Senator mentioned dyslexia, such as through the use of assistive technology, you would not need to put your hand up. You would be able to use that and build it into your system. That is why we are supporting AHEAD to build assistive technologies, which will be in-built into one’s system. The main thing we are trying to work on is building the agency for the individual in order that all our services are inclusively designed. This will mean that a person can be independent as much as possible.

When we were talking with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, we said we have worked with the National Disability Authority, NDA, which did a review of employment matters for persons with disabilities. The recommendation for further education was to build our system inclusively, which would support as many people as possible to be included in that environment. We will have universal design for everybody because everybody will benefit from that particular service. That is why we are supporting various different organisations to build that support. As I mentioned, AHEAD and Dyslexia Ireland will build in those supports. We now have a hub for assistive technology and I recommend that everybody use it because it identifies what supports a person might need. It is not that you need support; it is a matter of how you can do your job more effectively and efficiently by using those resources.

The Senator mentioned the courses. We have looked at the system and we have used the example of the adult literacy service. There are people in the service who may be the same age as I am and who have got supports from the system for the past 20 years but they have not progressed through that. We are trying to stop the flow into that continual service and support people when they are very young.

The Senator mentioned day services. The pilot programme we are working on with the Department of Education will do that. It will identify a person’s post-school transition, which might not be through further education at all. It might be a job, working in a community group, volunteering or working on a hobby because not everybody wants to progress right away into employment. This will give opportunities to people to find out what they want to do. That will change the system, as opposed to trying to address all the issues in the system. Do not get me wrong - they need to be addressed as well - but this is a matter of how we build new opportunities in order that people who are sitting around this table in another 30 years will not be looking at the exact same problems we are looking at today.

That is to give people a stopgap before they decide to access rehabilitative training. It gives them a two-year opportunity to look at various different options and programmes. There is a project manager leading that programme with the Department of Education and from what I am seeing already, it is inspirational because people are looking at their opportunities. They are given a window of opportunity to look at all the different options. As I say, it is not just about further education. It could be a community programme, a farming programme or it could be working with the local equine centre. It looks at options for people.

It is a pilot and its name is very long-winded. It is the post-primary students transitional development national steering group and local implementation committee. There are two pilots, one of which is in Dublin and one of which is in Galway. They are called local transition groups. The local ETBs are on that implementation group. It would not be appropriate for SOLAS to be on it because we do not know the local services. I think it will be great, particularly for those students who are doing the level 1 and 2 qualifications in the schools. Again, the Department will probably have more information, and it has allocated teaching and guidance hours to each school. To my mind, it is an inspirational pilot.

That is a really important question and it was something I was going to suggest as well. Our role as a committee is to have a report at the end of each term and we will make recommendations in it. It is important that we listen and that the organisations get their recommendations out there, as the Senator has said.

I am not going to get many opportunities like this. I would like to see more resources in the Civil Service for people who are from under-represented groups, such as marketing budgets, so that we can go out and actually spend money to get to know these stakeholder groups and win their confidence because that is what this is about. It is about getting communities that have not looked in our direction before to come and look in our direction. We can then tell they are welcome and this is what we can do for them.

We had a great school programme reaching 16- and 17-year-olds to plant that seed about careers in the civil and public sector, which was just not on the radar for many people. There are some overarching policy changes. We need to move from the medical model to the social model. We all speak in the social model, but our processes are still in the medical model. We ask disabled people for reports to prove, in effect, they are disabled. We do not ask non-disabled people to prove they are not disabled because of the small percentage of people who might abuse the system and get an extra 15 minutes. The Government needs to be wary about that, but there has to be a better way of taking that burden off people who are disabled and putting it onto the system in order to build that trust with people.

We have very high declaration rates for people sharing their disability with us and the accommodations we can provide them. Where it breaks down is when we have to pass it on to the hiring managers because they do not necessarily have that level of trust with a random stranger they have never met before in a Department in which that person is going to go and work. Like most humans, these people want to sit down face-to-face and tell the managers they have had mental health issues in the past or need to see a consultant three times per year. I understand that. It can be really challenging, however. People end up in jobs they cannot do and the system should have known better. The people in the system are trying really hard, but our system sometimes makes it really difficult for us to get the right person in the right job in the Civil Service, whether or not they have a disability, I might add. It is particularly challenging.

It is tough for people from marginalised communities to even apply for a job in the Civil Service. I know that myself from the work I do. Ms McKenna can tell us that we need to get the information out there. How do we do that in a community base? How do we support organisations to deliver that information to people on the ground who may want a job?

We have opened Civil Service jobs up to members of the Traveller community but very few members took up the opportunity to apply. That was not through any fault of their own. It is not normalised that we have people in these communities working in the Civil Service. We need to consider how we can make it appeal to the audience. How do people know it is for them and that the opportunity is there? How do we encourage people? A person may be applying for a job but not be supported to do the job or might not have good living conditions. How can a person go for a job if he or she does not have good living conditions? The person may be struggling and not have care assistance. It is difficult for some people.

They have gone back to their families and friends and said it is actually an okay place for them and they will get a chance like everybody else. All communities are different. What works to engage the migrant community is not necessarily what will work to engage the disabled community or the LGBT community. To assume that we can take the same approach with all is a mistake.

I am sure all my questions have been answered. They have all been taken; it is no problem. I welcome everyone here today, in particular the representatives from the WRC. I know there is a Carlow branch. I wish Ms Cahill well in her new role, which is very good and important.

I apologise if these questions have been asked already. I ask the Public Appointments Service representatives to discuss their organisation's progress against public sector employment targets. Will they discuss the barriers, including eligibility criteria for recruitment campaigns with people with disabilities accessing public sector employment? Can they discuss what is happening with locations, interviews and things like that? I do not know if they can do so. I will give an example. A young chap came to me last year who wanted a work placement in Carlow Garda station. We have an excellent Garda station, by the way. I want to compliment Carlow Garda station on its new vulnerable citizens office for Carlow County Council. It is also very much wheelchair-friendly and has a new bay for less-abled designated parking spaces. However, it does not have a lift, wheelchair-accessible front doors with electric entry buttons, a lowering public counter to support access for those in wheelchairs, or a glass case unit for anyone who might have vision issues. None of those facilities are there. That person came to me as he wanted to do a work placement there, but the building just was not suitable.

I refer to public sector equality and human rights. The public service organisations have a statutory obligation to eliminate discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and protect the human rights of staff and those to whom they provide service. What equality and human rights issues has PAS addressed in terms of people with disabilities and equal access to the employment market? Can the representatives discuss the process for when an individual with a disability applies to PAS through a competition, say, or for some kind of accommodation? Does the individual have to submit a certificate from his or her GP certifying his or her disability and what supports he or she needs? What happens with this information? At what point do the prospective employers receive the information? Can we improve this process so people with disabilities do not have to pay? What funding do they need? How much does it cost them?

If a person with a disability is employed in a job that requires a uniform, such as special footwear, is there any funding to help them? As we know, people on disability allowance are on very low money. If people have to go into a job where they will need a uniform and special equipment, such as boots and things, is there any funding? Can they go for funding for that?

I will turn to SOLAS. It was great when Ms Doherty spoke about how SOLAS and Down Syndrome Ireland collaborated on producing a short video on the many options FET provides for adults with Down's syndrome. She spoke about courses that SOLAS has developed in counties Dublin and Kerry. I want to know whether anything is in line for Carlow. It is really important. I welcome that SOLAS is working with Down Syndrome Ireland. That is really positive.

I will address my last question to SOLAS. Apprenticeships are really important. Ms Doherty gave the figures in that regard.

What are the challenges that the Government can help SOLAS with? Is more funding needed? Do we need to look at more courses? What is the role of apprenticeships for people who have a disability? I hope these questions have not been asked. I again thank the witnesses for being here today.

I thank the witnesses from PAS, SOLAS and the WRC for their input. In 2022 the European Commission reported that Ireland had the highest disability gap in the EU at 39%. In 2023 that increased to 42%. The EU average is supposed to be around 24%. We are not meeting our targets. I do not know what the figure is for this year and whether the gap has got even worse. We do not seem to be closing the gap. Why is that the case?

Are women more prone than men to being disadvantaged? I think we were previously told that men were more disadvantaged. I would be interested to hear the witnesses' thoughts about that.

What are the barriers, including ineligibility criteria, for recruitment campaigns regarding people with disabilities accessing public sector jobs? What are the main barriers?

Through SOLAS support, the Irish Deaf Society will offer courses to deaf adults and provide Irish Sign Language courses to 700 people this year. What sort of outcomes do we expect? What qualifications will come from that? What would be a good outcome in those situations?

Referrals to the WRC on the ground of disability have been the highest received over the past three years, amounting to 23% or 170 of the referrals received in 2023. In the public sector there is a minimum requirement that 3% or 4% of employees would be persons with disabilities. That is a very low percentage in general terms. How can we improve the outcomes if, in the public service, we have only got 3% or 4%. I am not sure how those gaps can be closed.

I thank the three groups for coming in. I have read their detailed opening statements for which I thank them.

Within this committee, we listen to people's lived experience. At what level do the three organisations represented here engage with people with disabilities in order to inform themselves as to how they can implement policies within their own organisations? How are facilities within the ETBs developed? Does the Public Appointments Service have somebody with a disability on interview boards or doing the assessing? How does that work? Are people available to do that type of work? When the WRC is making decisions on issues relating to discrimination against somebody with a disability, does it use the experience and expertise of people with disabilities and try to figure out whether somebody might be discriminated against?

The work of the organisations is varied and yet at the same time there is commonality across what they are doing in that they are dealing with issues relating to appointments, education or adjudicating on things that are wrong. How do the three different organisations deal with that? How do they engage with people who have the lived experience?

Are the facilities and buildings of the organisations equipped or fortified to ensure the people with disabilities can have access and can work in them? They should set an example for other employers. I came across the case of a young man who had done a third level course in computers but he wanted to do accountancy. One of the biggest obstacles was trying to find accountancy offices accessible to him. It was a bit of a challenge. It is not that they did not want to take him on, but they were not equipped to do so. In many cases the buildings were rented. Companies in rented space think about how they will work in it they do not think about disabilities first. Those are the two points I wanted to raise.

Before I go to the witnesses, I have a question for the Workplace Relations Commission. I know there are ongoing discussions with disability service providers with the section 39 organisations that we would have a lot of dealings with here. My information is that the section 39, section 50 and section 10 organisations are grouped together now for pay parity. Why are the section 39 organisations not being dealt with independently? Section 39 organisations relate to health and disabilities predominantly.

I will start with the representatives from SOLAS.

I will deal with Deputy Murnane O'Connor's questions first. I do not have the specific information on Carlow and Kilkenny, but I will certainly get the information to her. I think that was one of the first areas we were involved in. I will certainly get the Deputy a full report. The idea is that the two persons who are being supported by SOLAS through Down Syndrome Ireland would have visited all ETBs to provide them with training and do it on a calm basis.

One of my colleagues earlier mentioned moving away the medicalised model to a socially inclusive model. I will certainly get the Deputy information on that. The only requirement we had when we were funding that resource was that it had to be in mainstream provision. It must be in that environment of mainstreaming. We do not really want to fund it as segregated. As long as it is mainstream, we do not really mind what it is. I will certainly get the Deputy information on that. It started with looking at literacy programmes. We are slowly trying to change the system. We have the Latch-On programme which Down Syndrome Ireland wanted to be run for its literacy services. That has now moved on to the other programmes I mentioned allowing people to progress into further education and progress and get on with their lives without having to access ten or 20 years. They will get lifelong learning as they go along, but they have a pathway to take them wherever they want to go.

The Deputy also mentioned apprenticeships and asked how they can be more inclusive. We work with the OECD under the report that the NDA had funded about how to make the whole of education and all services more inclusive. They agreed with our feedback to have inclusive environments put in place as opposed to the measurement of the number of people with a disability.

Colleagues mentioned that. It is about moving away from the criteria in which you need somebody to medicalise their need for support and trying to in-build the supports. For example, what we are trying to do in the case of dyslexia, for which a significant number of learners would require support, is to build assistive technology into the system. It is about having that flexibility so that we can move towards building implicitness through universal design through all our services. That means, in due course, there should be fewer people labelising as having particular disability support needs. That is what we would like to influence today. When we move to that system, we are nearly signing ourselves up to look as though we have underachieved. Last year, there were so many people with disabilities called and this year, there are 1,000 fewer but perhaps that is because those people did not need to put up their hands and look for particular supports. That is the broader picture.

There is the access and inclusion work group under the National Apprenticeship Office. All the stakeholders with regard to inclusion and access are in that group. It is working on a work plan. There is a bursary of €3,000 in that particular programme. It is providing reasonable accommodations and supports for apprentices in the system.

The Irish Deaf Society was mentioned. Deputy Ellis asked what the outcomes would be. When we work with these support organisations, we try to build relationships with them. This year, we brought in a system of delivering on enhanced reporting and on KPIs. We are delighted to be working with those organisations. We can learn from them because they have the expertise. They know exactly what they are talking about in their particular areas. A bit like Down Syndrome Ireland, it is a specialist in its area. NALA is a specialist in its areas. They provide these programmes. They are working towards developing a number of certified programmes as well but whether they are accredited or unaccredited, providing they offer that service to the 700 participants, we are happy with that. As we progress through the years, we will get into more detail about specific outcomes but we hope we will learn a lot from that particular organisation to support us to reach all our learners and to build assistive technology into that system so that learners can be supported. That was the Deputy's question on that matter. Was there another question?

A number of the questions overlap so we will do a trio, if we can. When it comes to PAS, it is confusing because we have our own organisation and we recruit for everybody as well. I will talk a little about both. There was a question about the barriers to recruitment for people with disabilities to the Civil Service. There are no particular entry qualifications for a number of grades. For temporary clerical officer and clerical officer, for example, you do not need a degree or qualification. You have the opportunity. The barriers are, I hope, narrowing from that point of view. As regards locations, there are locations all around the country. We are still using Zoom to interview people. It is very popular for people with disabilities to use Zoom because it does not take them out of their comfort zones and they have the areas they like to use. I cannot answer the question on funding to help people with uniforms and things like that because that is down to the policies of individual Departments. In our offices, we have a disability liaison officer who supports anybody with a disability or anybody who needs extra help. We have very good people who deal with culture and we have our champion who works with us and with external candidates to help them. We have done a lot of work around the WAM programme and the AHEAD programme, which were mentioned in another question. In regard to interview boards for those campaigns, we work closely with the candidates to help them to get through the interviews. We have put a lot of work - Ms Lyons will talk about this - into trying to get more board members with disabilities to work with us but it is a work in progress. It is difficult. Ms Lyons will take the piece around reports.

I touched on this when the Deputy was out of the room. We see ourselves on that journey of universal design and that issues like dyslexia would be built into systems. We are not just there yet. We look for medical reports but if somebody says they need wheelchair access, we do not look for a report for that. That is absolutely fine. It is more for things like dyslexia. The reason we look for that information is that we look at everybody on a case by case basis and try to design and develop the accommodation that will best work for that person. It may be a case that somebody with a certain score on the WISC test or something like that may get time and quarter while somebody else may get time and a half. It is about working really hard to give them the accommodation that will help and support them. The information in those reports can also help us to decide on the accommodations for interview, for example. We have a lot of conversations with candidates. As my colleague, Ms McKenna, said, they are the experts in their disability. We see ourselves as the experts in reasonable accommodations but the expert in the disability is the candidate.

To touch on another question, we involve the person with the disability all the time. We are open when looking for those reports. We have reports people got when they were 12 or 13 and they are now 50. That is fine. I know certain organisations will ask people to get a specific report; we do not want to put a burden like that on candidates. We accept any information that will help us to understand the candidate.

There were two questions around the low rate of employment. We are joint last with Greece, so we are not alone when it comes to low levels of employment. There are structural and attitudinal barriers. That is irrespective of what sector or industry you work in. There are structural barriers in the types of jobs, the working week and tasks. For example, you cannot advertise a job in the Civil Service on a part-time basis. All jobs have to be advertised on a full-time basis. That will change. A person who wants to work but can perhaps work only 25 or 30 hours a week because of their disability is automatically ruled out from applying for those jobs unless they are prepared to start full time, get in, do their probation and negotiate with their line manager about scaling back their hours. That is all discretionary. It is business critical but also the line manager will decide. There are structural attitudes like that, along with buildings. Garda stations are notorious for being inaccessible because they tend to be in the oldest buildings in the town. There is work being done in this regard. When we place general grade people and they have mobility issues, we are not going to put them in a building that does not have facilities but that does not mean it does not happen - 90% of the building might be accessible, but the canteen or the front door might not be. Those are some of the structural barriers.

There are also the attitudinal barriers. We have a deficit model when it comes to people with disabilities. The first thing we think about is what they cannot do instead of what they could do if we modified or tweaked things to fit the job around them, as opposed to trying to fit them around the job. We are getting better at including that lived experience - the voice of people with disabilities - in our processes and policies. We spent all of last year working on a particular part of our process, the assignment and onboarding piece. We took a co-design approach to this which meant there were 100 people involved in that project who had disabilities, were experts in disability, experts in co-design, hiring managers across the system and public sector organisations outside of the Civil Service. We all came together and discussed the challenges and how to find solutions. All of that was driven by the lived experience of the people in those groups. We will, I hope, continue to do that. We survey every candidate who comes through our organisation. In that survey we ask them about how they found the process, if it was acceptable, if they got the supports they needed, if we were efficient and if we communicated too much or too little. We have a constant feedback loop.

We are working to get not just disabled people, but people with a migrant background or whatever lived experience, and trying to integrate them more into our process and how we design policies and so o n.

I will go to Deputy Ellis's question first, which was about the 331 cases referred under the Employment Equality Acts and what more we can do to encourage more cases to come forward. In the work of the WRC, we walk a thin line to make sure we do not go into an advisory space. It is more an information space. I referred to the fantastic team in our information and customer services centre in Carlow town that carried out 44 outreach events last year. Those events go to schools, the national ploughing championships, employer bodies, disability groups and ICTU. We set ourselves annual targets to increase our outreach. On top of that, we consistently look at things like the website. The WRC can be legalistic. We are dealing with employment law. We have commenced a process in the past year or so of creating animations to make things visual and easier for individuals who might have literacy issues, intellectual disabilities or disabilities that challenge people to understand the wordy nature of some of the publications. We continue to do that work and improve it. From the perspective of information and outreach, we take on average 60,000 calls per annum through the information and customer services centre in Carlow town. It is in our annual report. We advise employers and employees of all types from across society. I think that covers that question.

Deputy Murnane O'Connor asked about lived experience. We regularly engage with stakeholders. We have mentioned bodies like AsIAm in particular. We recently had a deaf barrister, Sofia Kalinova. She does not mind us mentioning her name. They meet with our public facing employees, in particular our adjudicators, to advise them on best practice around engaging with those members of the public when they come in for their case. It gets really complex even around Irish Sign Language. As a layperson I would not even have known there are seven different versions of that. There is also Braille. We have a Braille printer, but we had an incident where it was not the right Braille. However, we are lucky to have employees in our information services centre who were able to support us to make sure the complainant in that instance got the correct version of Braille, which we had to outsource beyond our printer. We will carry out a customer survey this year and up to now we have not had questions that were very linked to disability accommodations. It is our intention this year to make sure that is included so we can get more granular and give more people the opportunity to put forward suggestions about how we can make ourselves more accessible from that perspective, and make sure people feel comfortable to have their hearing on an equal basis to anybody else. As I mentioned, our buildings are all fully accessible. Whatever the requirement beyond regular accessibility, we make sure it is facilitated for those individuals who populate that e-complaint form with their details.

On the question about section 39 organisations I take it that we are talking about the conciliation hearings.

The WRC is there, in essence, as a facilitation body to facilitate those talks. Whatever format they take is usually one that the parties have requested, and that we will have facilitated. We would not drive the format. I know the section 39 one, but I do not know the other. We would not make recommendations to separate those out.

We will have to ask in a different forum. I thank all the witnesses, and I also thank them for bearing with us while we were voting. I thank them for their evidence and ask them to keep engaging with us.

We will be at a tremendous loss as a committee from here on because Brenda McCauley is leaving us. She has been absolutely outstanding with her background team. She has done a tremendous amount of work. She is part of the team here, and the team has been excellent. She is transferring to the Department of children, and she has certainly got a great grounding here over the past three and a half years. We wish her the very best, and I say a sincere thank you on behalf of the committee for the work she has done, her dedication to the work and the commitment she has given to the committee. We wish her the very best and good luck.

I think the Dáil is just about to call a vote so we have been saved by the bell.