Employment
Wage Subsidy Scheme
This scheme provides financial assistance to employers to encourage them to employ people with disabilities for a minimum of 20 hours a week.
Contact: your local FÁS office for more information.
Job Interview Interpreter Grant
This service is provided by FÁS who will pay a standard fee for a three-hour period for an interpreter to accompany a person with a speech or hearing impairment for job interview.
Contact: your local FAS office for more information.
Personal Reader Grant
This grant provides funding, in line with the national minimum wage, for a maximum of 640 hours a year, for people who are blind or visually impaired to hire a personal reader to assist them at work.
Contact: your local FÁS office for more information.
Workplace Equipment Adaptation Grant
This grant is for €6,348.70 and enables a person with a disability to make their workplace more accessible.
Contact: your local FÁS office for more information.
Supported Employment Programme
The programme helps people to find and keep employment and operates through a range of organisations. You need to be referred to the scheme by a FÁS Employment Service Officer or a Local Employment Service Mediator.
Contact: your local FÁS office for more information.
Employee Retention Grant
This grant is to assist employers to retain staff who become disabled through sickness or injury. The grant can be used to assist such employees with things such as retraining.
Contact: your local FÁS office for more information.
Disability Awareness Training
FÁS provides grants to employers to assist with the cost of staff training in disability awareness.
Contact: your local FAS office for more information.
Back to Work Allowance Scheme
This scheme helps unemployed people and those on certain disability payments to take up employment. People in the scheme retain a percentage of their social welfare payment along with extra benefit (where applicable) for a period of up to three years. The employment must be for a minimum of 20 hours per week and expected to last for at least 12 months.
Contact: your local social welfare office or Citizens Information Centre, or Department of Social and Family Affairs.
Revenue Job Assist
This is a special tax allowance for people who take up work after having been unemployed for one year or more and those in receipt of Disability Allowance, Blind Pension or Invalidity Pension for 12 months or more, or Illness Benefit for three years. The job you are taking must be for at least 30 hours and last at least 12 months. In year one the allowance is €3,810, plus €1,270 for each child, reducing to two-thirds of this amount in year two and one-third in year three.
Apply to: your local tax office
Community Employment
This programme is operated by FÁS and helps people who have been unemployed long-term to get back to work by providing them with part-time and temporary job placements within local communities.
Apply to: your local FAS office
Community Service Programme
This programme aims to support local community activity that provides opportunity, in the way of supported employment for people with disabilities. Organisations that operate on a not-for-profit basis can apply for this.
Contact: Pobal, Holbrook House, Holles Street, Dublin 2, for more information.
Self-Employment
A Back to Work Enterprise Allowance operates for those who are self-employed or considering starting their own business. This scheme allows for people on social welfare benefits to retain a percentage of their benefit whilst taking up self-employment for a period of four years.
Apply to: your local citizens information centre or your local social welfare office, or contact the Department of Social and Family Affairs.
Benefits and Work
The affects of taking up work on your benefits depends on how much you earn and whether you are getting a social assistance (means-tested) or a social insurance (PRSI-based) disability payment.
The maximum amount you can earn and still keep an entitlement to the minimum Disability Allowance payment is €420, and if you are getting Blind Pension, €425.10.
People in receipt of Disability Allowance or Blind Pension may be allowed to earn up to €120 a week from rehabilitative employment or self-employment without their social welfare payments being affected. This is providing the work has been approved by the Department of Social and Family Affairs. You may lose your medical card.
If you earn between €120 and €350, 50% of your earning will be taken into account in the Disability Allowance or Blind Pension means test. You retain some extra benefits, such as Free Travel, but you may lose others, such as your Rent or Mortgage Interest Supplement and Blind Welfare Allowance.
