The average rate of employment for people with disabilities in Ireland is 32.5%, which is the worst in Europe, according to a report from the European Disability Forum.
Ireland has reached full employment, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, and businesses regularly report the difficulties they experience attracting and retaining staff, so why do people with disabilities struggle more to enter the labour market?
The reasons are manifold and best explained by people with experience of navigating the labour market.
Seonaid O Murchadha is one of the directors of the Independent Living Movement of Ireland, and is a lecturer in Maynooth University.
"I acquired my disability when I was 18, I was burnt in a fire and I lost both my legs and my right hand but most people will acquire a disability during their working life."
Most people who have a disability were not born with that disability, as most disability is acquired. Ms O Murchadha said that is one of the reason why employers should cater for disability because an accident or an illness can happen during a person's working life.
It hasn't defined her, but her disability has been a barrier to employment.
"When I left college I discovered that I was applying for 10 times more jobs than my non disabled peers, and as my non-disabled peers got great jobs, and I was still left behind, I began to realise that this disability thing wasn't going to go away."
Brian Dalton works for a company in the financial sector as an Accessibility Test Lead, testing digital content on websites and on mobile apps. He works to ensure that digital content is accessible to people, like him, who are blind.
"I always say to people that I'm in quite a privileged position really because professionally I'm an accessibility test lead but I'm also a user of the technology as well so hopefully, I can influence the output that happens in terms of design, development and testing for accessibility."
Technology has been a gamechanger for people with disabilities in the workplace, but sometimes even getting to that workplace is a challenge.
"When I started, there were no wheelchair accessible buses, now there are wheelchair accessible buses, however, they can only accommodate one wheelchair at a time, so if you are at a bus stop and a bus pulls in, and there is one wheelchair user on board, then you ain't getting on that bus," Mr Dalton said.
Negotiating public transport to get to work is no longer an issue for Mr Dalton, because he now works from home - one of the positive outcomes from the Covid pandemic.
"Absolutely, in fact the company that I'm with now, hadn't considered remote working until the pandemic," he said. "My fear is that it has fallen off the radar a lot and a lot of companies are insistent on bringing people back to the office, full-time and this can be a big barrier to disabled people because obviously my home office is set up the way I need it to be, it's got the technology. Every disabled person will have different requirements and they also need to have an environment that is right for them."
Ms O Murchadha said she thinks employers need more support and education, "because for them disability could equal problem or could equal cost, and that's one of the biggest myths when it comes to disability, because to be honest, when you are talking about disability, you are talking about a large market of untapped potential".
Disclosing a disability when applying for a job is a personal decision, and often a difficult one because every candidate wants to be judged on their ability to do the job. "If you are going into an interview situation, you are going to want to present yourself as the best person for that role," Ms O Murchadha said, "so why would you be going in there saying I need X, Y, Z to do the role, you want to be judged on your abilities so there are many disabled people who don't want to talk about it."
The so-called benefits trap is also preventing people from entering the labour market. If you gain employment and earn an income, many people with disabilities lose benefits like a medical card and a free travel pass. "I've been in situations where you either get your prosthetics or your keep your job," Ms O Murchadha said.
The Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities is a cross-Government approach to address the barriers and challenges to the employment of disabled people. Strand 3 of the strategy 'Make Work Pay', looks to address the benefits trap by ensuring people do not lose benefits when they enter employment.
Margaret McCabe is Chief Executive of the Public Appointments Service - better known as PublicJobs.ie. They are involved in the Willing, Able Mentoring programme which was set up to help people with disabilities get meaningful work. It's enjoyed great success. 80% of graduates secured employment as a direct result of their placement.
While the unemployment rate is at a record low level, she believes employers should take advantage of the opportunity to hire talent.
"Opportunities are there that have never been there before," Ms McCabe said. "The use of technology has improved so much over the last 20 years that it is not as difficult as it was to help a job adjust to the person and people are thinking more that way now, where we have jobs to suit the person as opposed to the person to suit the job, so I think it's a really good time to look at that."
Mr Dalton said a disabled person can be as productive as anyone if the right things are in place. "In my case, if content is designed in an accessible way, even though I'm using assisted technology, I should be as productive as my sighted colleagues are, but I need it to be accessible."
