The NDA launch of two reports completed in collaboration with the OECD and the ESRI, September 2021

The agenda for this event included a Ministerial welcome, presentations by the ESRI and the OECD, and a panel discussion with representation from the business community, persons with disabilities and the public sector.

The two reports offer an in-depth examination of the current situation with regard to the employment of persons with disabilities in terms of both data and policy.

The OECD report ‘Disability, work and inclusion in Ireland: Engaging and supporting employers’ provides an independent and internationally recognised diagnosis of key trends and untapped opportunities, as it relates to engaging employers in improving labour market outcomes for persons with disabilities. The report showcases learning from other OECD jurisdictions that could be adapted and applied in an Irish context to enhance employer engagement. The analysis provided can guide future policy development in Ireland, as it sets out a number of recommendations for consideration across various government departments. It is hoped that there may be scope for some of the recommendations to be included in the next Comprehensive Employment Strategy Action Plan.

The ESRI report ‘Identification of skills gaps among persons with disabilities and their employment prospects’ enhances knowledge of the skills and employment gaps of persons with disabilities in comparison to persons without disabilities both in Ireland and Europe. The analysis utilises a mix of econometric and descriptive statistics methods across four datasets and includes some novel applications of econometric methods to the analysis of labour market outcomes for persons with disabilities.