An unprecedented opportunity existed to improve the employment prospects of people with disabilities, a pre-conference event was told in Waterford yesterday.
Ms Mary Wallace, the Minister of State with responsibility for equality and disabilities, said the speed of our economic growth had made it difficult for some employers to fill vacancies, but the solution was closer to hand than many of them realised.
"In a tightening labour market, employers should recognise that people with disabilities can meet the labour shortages in many sectors," Ms Wallace said. She was speaking at a workshop organised in advance of today's European policy conference on the theme "New Perspectives - Disability and Employment".
The EU-funded event will be attended by policy-makers from the EU and beyond, and will be addressed by Mr Edward Kennedy jnr, a leading civil rights attorney in the US.
Ms Wallace said she was not advocating that companies employ people with disabilities out of tokenism. "On the contrary, they should consider employing people with disabilities for the contribution they can make to the firm."
However, the workshop was also told that agencies representing people with disabilities needed "to get out and begin marketing their `product'." Mr Diarmuid Ryan, director of human resources at Waterford Crystal, said agencies should go into workplaces, carry out research and learn about the job requirements.
"They could then go away and match people with the skills and abilities required in these industries, rather than presenting a person with disabilities to an employer and asking the employer to find a position for that person.
"Agencies could be more proactive and match the needs and abilities of their people with the skills and requirements of industry," he said. The workshop also heard details of a Waterford Crystal project, organised as part of the EU's Horizon scheme, aimed at creating more opportunities for disabled persons. The 38 participants included existing staff as well as members of the local community, who were given work experience and training.
Mr Richard Cooper, a master cutter at the company for 23 years who was born profoundly deaf, said the project had given deaf participants more confidence, and other workers now had a better understanding of their problems. One outcome was that some non-deaf staff had begun taking lessons in sign language.
A participant from outside the company, Ms Carol Grant, who was paralysed in an accident at the age of 16, said she believed workers were quite good at adapting to having disabled colleagues alongside them. "It's the bosses that need to change," she said.
She said she had learned so much about computers during the project that she now felt capable of becoming self-employed.
Other speakers at the conference today will include Mr Brian Crowley MEP; Mr Redmond O'Donoghue, chief executive of Waterford Crystal; Mr Niall Crowley, chief executive officer of the Equality Authority; and Mr Michel Laine, a senior official with the EU's directorate-general for employment, industrial relations and social affairs.
