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COVID-19 HAS COMPOUNDED the difficulties workers with disabilities face, but it did not cause the fault-line in Irish social policy that resulted in Ireland having the poorest EU participation rates in the workforce… even before the pandemic.
Despite the shift in emphasis to remote working in the last year, there is scant regard for the potential this offers people with disabilities in a post-pandemic world.
While working from home does not suit all jobs any more than it does all personality types, it does create more options. So where are workers with disabilities in this picture? Could it be that they are obscured by policies which often create more obstacles than opportunities?
Despite all the strategies, programmes, interventions, projects, grants and personnel involved in supporting people into the workplace, it must be clear to everyone that something is not working.
It was not working before the pandemic, it is not working now, and will not work into the future – unless we take a radically different approach and aim higher.
Supports impossible to navigate
People with disabilities want to contribute to the economic recovery of our country. They want to participate in the labour market, to continue working after sickness or injury and achieve their potential.
What they have however, is a mishmash of different strategies and policies developed and enacted separately, using different measurements of success. Nowhere is this more evident than in the almost impossible to navigate supports aimed at increasing participation in the labour force.
What is given with one hand, is taken with another. You may work, but you may not have a personal assistant. You can get assistive technology, but you need to wait so long, that the job is gone.
The policies trip over each other and work against each other. This is the result of a reduction of complexity, where component parts of a situation are dealt with separately and managed through “discreet interventions, layered on top of another” instead of being understood at a strategic level as a complex whole.
Under-ambitious strategy
Research just published suggests that the Irish approach has succumbed to this very thinking trap: policies and programmes are boxed into neat silos of geography, eligibility, income thresholds, employment support type, and disability type.
But the reality is that people with disabilities are just like everyone else – people with different talents, skills and preferences, found everywhere and anywhere, with very diverse conditions, and having individual experiences of those conditions.
Effective policy making must match complexity rather than seek to reduce it into neat boxes, into which very few people fit.
The research, published by Eurofound – the EU agency for the improvement of living and working conditions – includes a chapter on the Irish situation.
As the researcher for the Irish case study, the frustration amongst everyone I spoke to was palpable. All well-meaning attempts to be constructive were constrained by a lack of vision or investment in strategic governance.
The 10-year Comprehensive Employment Strategy was regarded as “hugely under-ambitious” in vision, and lacking in strategic governance at a high enough level to be effective in implementation.
High control and low transparency
It has been said that a bad system will beat a good person every time, and this is certainly borne out here. Looking at the current policy environment, there are concerns at every level from operations, coordination, management and monitoring, governance and strategic vision of the system of supports.
The landscape is characterised by a top-down paternalistic approach to policy-making which lacks transparency. This is coupled with high levels of control in management of services, all of which suppresses innovation, and increases competition between services vying for clients and funding.
We are looking at a creaking mechanism, which lacks ambition for itself, but more importantly, for those it serves.
Nothing short of radical transformation will stop the flow of yet another generation of young people, or people who acquire a disability during their working life disappearing into the obscurity of state and service dependency, out of sight and out of mind.
Embracing the complexity
There are areas that could help transform this sector to a virtuous cycle of success.
The first involves reframing the issue as a complex one. This would have a dramatic effect on how we might approach the issue from a problem that can be fixed to one that requires continuous learning-in-action.
If we have learnt anything in the last year, it is 10-year strategies no longer apply. We need to commit to learning forward for the uncertain world that lies ahead.
The upcoming digital literacy strategy must give people access a digitalised public employment service as well as the remote workplace. Similarly, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe’s newly announced Commission on Taxation and Welfare must remove VAT on assistive technologies that are vital for participation and inclusion in the modern day workforce.
An approach informed by complexity, also needs a strong driving vision and shared purpose that puts people with disabilities first and involves them in the design and monitoring of progress, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.
Once the complexity and shared purpose are understood, it is time to grant autonomy to act to those closest to the jobseeker/worker alongside strong lines of accountability and responsibility. This would allow movement away from top-down management practices.
Investment is also required in a culture of better coordination between services and encourage sharing of knowledge between them about what works and doesn’t work.
Monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness must reside closer to the ground, and run alongside programmes rather than at the end of funding rounds, allowing programmes to learn, adapt and tailor services in a responsive way.
A future for all, not some
As we reimagine fresh hybrid working conditions for all our citizens post-pandemic, let us not forget the weariness at how things have been.
The last year is a good reminder for some of us, about what jobseekers with disabilities already know: that the unrelenting endless cycle of groundhog days and going nowhere wears thin.
We all need hope, and to believe that there is a life, a job, a future waiting for us. And we need that future to deliver, now more than ever.
Joan O’Donnell is an independent consultant, lecturer in Systems Thinking and doctoral researcher. She manages FreedomTech – a project which aims to ensure that all people with disabilities have access to the technology they need to participate fully in all aspects of living.
SHUTTING THE DOOR Investigation
Do you want to know if the pandemic will make it even harder for people with disabilities to get jobs in Ireland?
The Noteworthy team want to do an in-depth investigation into whether recommendations made by joint Oireachtas committees two years ago have been implemented, how Ireland differs from our European neighbours in terms of supports and the impacts the ‘new normal’ will have on vulnerable groups.
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Haloween and St Patricks Day – two great days we exported. Not bad for a little rock in the Atlantic.
@Paul P O’Sullivan: Thats not all! What about kn#cker drinking, Clancy Fuel Merchant GAA jerseys, the requirement for subtitles for people talking in English on Bondi Rescue, Frosted Lucky Charms, clapping on Airplanes, the list goes on
@Paul P O’Sullivan: Patricks day we can claim, though we are not the country who celebrate it the most.
Halloween may have been originally Irish, but the way we celebrate it has nothing to do with Ireland. And most people think it is an American holiday, which is not entirely untrue. Witches, dressing up, trick or treating are all American. There is no Irish part to it.
The saddest part is that if you want to celebrate either properly you go abroad.
@Andy K: Why would you have to go abroad to ‘celebrate them properly’? Don’t quite understand what you mean by that.
@O Swetenham: because Bonfires are now illegal. Because Catholicism equated anything not for their God as a Sin.
@Shannon Mcg: so no bonfires and Catholicism are the reason we can’t celebrate Halloween and St Patrick’s day, and have to venture abroad to experience them “properly”? Sorry, but that makes no sense.
@O Swetenham: Bonfires are a TRADITIONAL SAMHAIN celebration that was to represent bringing light back to the dark times, to give power back to the sun, to light the way for souls that were lost. With the ban on bonfires, that means a traditional celebration is now illegal here.
Catholicism made Halloween/Samhain into a watered down holiday. Originally, you would do Divination and leave offerings to Spirits but that was considered Witchcraft and was outlawed under Catholic rule.
I never mentioned Paddys day.
@Andy K: No country celebrates Patrick’s day more than ireland, certainly not per head. Halloween has Celtic/Christian origins, you learn something new everyday. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
@Andy K:
Off you go so, we’ll definitely miss you.
We, along with Scottish exiles, exported a custom that is now practised by children of all ethnic backgrounds in North America (don’t forget Canada – but the Eskimos don’t do Halloween.) However, in Ireland today many children, abetted by parents, imitate American echoes instead of adhering to the púca origins. The same pickup on American echoes has been happening with St. Patrick’s Day. The Irish-Americans invented the Patrick’s Day parade in order to assert themselves against racial denigration; but nowadays it’s developed into razzmatazz showbiz, funny paddyhats, painted faces and exaggerated pre patrician ‘celtic’ mythological creatures dragged laboriously through main streets. There is a cultural forgetting and a slavish imitation of American kultur. It is found in many other aspects of Irish life today – speech, dress, popular music, attitudes to traditional beliefs, television and literary references. The words of Polonius to his departing son Laertes are worth quoting:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.
Hamlet 1:3
@Garreth Byrne: If we are to follow your advice (and to our own selves be true), can you kindly outline what version of Ireland and its culture you feel is appropriate? People and cultures evolve.
@Olllie B: I’m in a dressing gown at the moment. As soon as I get dressed it’s a good walk for me. Enjoy this autumnal day. Read Keats’s poem, To Autumn.
@Garreth Byrne:
The day it went full Americano was when – “help the Halloween party” was finally replaced with “Trick or treat”
Next thing you know we’ll be giving out candy instead of sweets. And don’t try handing out fruit or nuts to kids now days they’ll look at you as if you have 10 bleedin heads.
@Honeybadger197: Cultures evolve, yes. Cultures also degrade. Cultures disappear and are replaced. I’ll let you try to work out what kind of Ireland and what kind of culture is ‘appropriate’. Maybe another thread, after we’ve enjoyed the Bank Holiday.
@Garreth Byrne: love that Hamlet quote at the end. Great comment too.
First world complaint.
@John Michalski: Should we let our traditions and culture die?
@Mary Murphy: Depends on whether they’re good or bad.
@Mary Murphy: Our traditions and culture? What part that is left is Irish? The holiday is purely American culture and tradition. Just like your christmas dinner.
@Andy K: Yes it has become Americanised (you called it a holiday????), but unless people like the author if this piece stand up we will completely lose our identity and traditions. I for one hope that Starbucks and McDonald’s don’t take over the world.
@Mary Murphy: Already have
@John Michalski: actually a third world complaint about becoming a first world cultural change. Like Irish, there is no implicit need for Halloween or st Patrick’s (unlike music and dancing), so it has to evolve to it’s current commercial state (like the Dutch Santa) to become popular.
@Gary Mason: not my world. I still eat and drink local food wherever I go. I will support local industries and jobs and do everything I can to keep them going.
Complete horse … Who is the editor on this site ???
@Paul Maher: ahh Paul, why the long face?
@Paul Maher: I agree. What’s wrong with a young boy dressing up as superman instead of a skeleton, or a girl dressing up as a princess instead of a witch, if that’s what they want to do and so long as they have fun doing it? Author here sounds like a miserable you know what to me. Would he really refuse to let one of his own girls dress up like that if that’s what her friends were doing and what she wanted to do too?
@Paul Maher: the editor is cholly appleseed
@Michael Geraghty: Id reply if yours wasn’t an alias …
@Jumperoo: yes, because we couldn’t possibly prevent and deny the precious little ones from getting and doing what THEY want all of the time, everything and everyone else be damned.
@☘️: are you the author, or just answering the question? Either way, I’m not talking about letting them do absolutely everything they want, absolutely all the time. I’m just asking what’s wrong in letting them choose their own costume for a bit of dress up fun. As for everything and everyone else be damned – does that not also work the other way? I.E. you (author?) Say child and child’s choice of costume be damned, and you (author?) tell them the only kind of costume they can wear instead?
@Jumperoo: Didn’t read the article because it’s not newsworthy .
No it wouldn’t have died out here
@Dermot Lane: Care to back up your point with some examples and facts? Lúnasa celebrations, the Wren Day traditions for Stephens Day and various other customs mostly died out. What makes you think Halloween would have been so durable?
Has always been strong in West of Ireland and the country treats Samhain as a national holiday with kids off school. They don’t get that in America! The old Jack O’Lanterns that you can see in Turlough House country museum in Castlebar carved out of turnips are a lot scarier than the American pumpkins. But pumpkins are easier carve. The American Halloween has not changed all that much.
TBH I don’t know most kids that know at my door, not because how they are dressed but because they don’t live in my estate. There are rich pickings to be had so parents drive their kids/teens come from far and wide to take advantage. Once our estate is hit, they move on to the next one.
@Lily:
Don’t be such a misery. Welcome all the kids no matter where they might come from.
If Hallowe’en had not survived me for one would have gave 0 FuKCs
It is perhaps because we do not get weather extreme as a normal part of the seasons that the swings in daylight and darkness throughout the year has more relevance for us than the States where their seasons are built around weather. With Easter dates varying from year to year, St Patrick’s day was closest to the Equinox and cultures have eventually adopted it as a Spring festival. Our body clock registers February as the beginning of Spring and a really tangible feel for more daylight just as we now experience nature shutting down for the dormant period of winter (Samhain/November). Behind all the masks and traditions are the necessary adjustments we make or suffer the consequences as known through seasonal affective disorder or the body’s response in the same way our bodies respond to the daily wake/sleep cycle.
Many of these folklore types are miseries. What is wrong with kids dressing up they way they want to and enjoying themselves? They are actually honouring this old tradition their way, which is the way it should be and is essential if these traditions are to progress.
Maybe the writer would prefer if they wore rags and had holes in their shoes, or no shoes at all as in the past.
What utter nonsense. Halloween is ours and always has been. Our new year begins tomorrow, enjoy. Halloween has been around forever, the USA just a few hundred years, this writer needs to get some perspective.
Great article. We are buying back our own mangled custom from America. Our should protect our cultural heritage better than that.
What a cranky crappy article
It would have survived look at Irelands Own, it would have been a sub culture except for the tricks and fireworks?
Great time of year for flashers and criminals
@Johnny Hihats: Absolutely!! I wouldn’t answer the door to an adult in disguise mask and all!!
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