Despite finishing his third-level education at a time of full employment, Karl Kavanagh (23) didn’t think he’d “ever” get a job.
“I thought I’d go to college and then it would be, ‘See you after’ for me. I thought it would be hard to get a job. I thought I’d be looking for ages.”
He had just completed a three-year programme at the National Learning Network, which supports people with disabilities. His lecturer suggested he apply to the discount retailer Mr Price.
“They gave me a day to try out – packing the shelves and helping customers. Then, they gave me a call to say they had a job offer for me.” Three years on, he is still with the retailer’s Coolock, Dublin branch.
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“I am dealing with customers, making sure they are okay, that they have everything they need ... I like the environment and the team. The team is very good. We all get on really well. We have fun.”
Séadna O’Hara (25), a retail assistant in the Blanchardstown branch, was “so surprised” to be offered a job after graduating last year from Trinity College Dublin’s centre for people with intellectual disabilities.
“In my work I am doing pricing, doing the baskets and the tills. It is pretty good work,” he says. “Some of it can be pretty complex ... It can be a bit challenging if someone wants to do a refund.”
He loves working with the company. “It feels like home to me,” he says. “The team are very nice and the customers, because I treat them very well, they smile at the way you treat them.”
The young men were among several Mr Price employees at an event hosted by the company on Wednesday, to demonstrate employing disabled people is “not only possible, but value-adding for the company”, said operations manager Edel McSorley.
“Ireland has still one of the lowest employment rates for people with disabilities in Europe. That is an unnecessary reality,” she said.
Citing Disability Federation of Ireland data from last year, she said just 33 per cent of disabled people were in employment, compared with the EU average of 51 per cent. In addition, 40 per cent of disabled people here are at risk of poverty.
Ms McSorley has championed employing disabled people since she started with the company in 2011. Now 17 per cent of its workforce are drawn from the cohort.
Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary, attending the event, said it was “just not acceptable” that Ireland had one of the highest disabled unemployment rates in the EU. He urged employers to explore available supports to employ disabled people, and to “take the leap”.
He said “harm” was being done to disabled people by the barriers they faced in all aspects of their lives.
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“What Mr Price has done is a signal to every other employer that this works.” While employers and workers won when more disabled people were in their workforce, the “biggest winner is society”.
Disability was “a huge focus” for Government and his department, he continued. A cross-departmental national disability strategy (NDS), led by the Taoiseach, was being finalised.
Asked if all employers should be set disability employment targets (public sector employers have been set a target of 6 per cent by the end of the year), Mr Calleary said he wanted to “work on the carrot first”.
“If companies are not employing people with disabilities they are missing out on extraordinary skills, talent that will add so much to [their] workplace.”
Asked what life would be like he did not have his job, Mr O’Hara said: “I would feel a little left out. I would be sad.”
