To ask the Minister for Communities for an update on ongoing work to provide employability support to those with disabilities to allow them to gain and retain meaningful employment following the changes to the Local Growth Fund.

Mr Lyons

Members will be aware that the local growth fund is administered directly by the UK Government and that the Finance Minister leads on that programme on behalf of the Executive. Beyond the local growth fund, my Department continues to deliver a wide range of employability support to disabled people and people with health conditions. Provision includes specialist health and employability support through Workable, Access to Work and the condition management programme as well as more general support via our front-line jobs and benefits offices, JobStart, the work experience programme and localised interventions commissioned by the labour market partnerships and funded by my Department. Those activities help people with disabilities or health conditions to move into and remain in meaningful employment, with tailored support for them and their employers.

Mr Lyons

Like every other Member, I want to see a satisfactory resolution to the matter, and, through the Department of Finance, we continue to press that case. The Member is correct in saying that many of the programmes contribute to helping us tackle the wider problems in that area, which is why I want to see them continue. Depending on the outcome, we will examine what needs to be done to make sure that we are still on the path towards meeting those goals. That is why, in bringing all that together, the disability and work strategy will be so important and will make a real difference, as long as we can ensure that it is properly funded.

Mr Kingston

The Minister will be aware that the 64% cut in funding for third-sector economic inactivity support projects will result in 400 redundancies in two weeks' time and that the number of beneficiaries of those projects — 1,100 — will be cut in half. Is the Minister's Department in a position to plug the gap created by the reduction in funding from the local growth fund?

Mr Lyons

Under the draft Budget, I am not in a position to fill those gaps. That is why, as part of the correspondence that I had with the Finance Minister, I raised the fact that the matter had been omitted from the draft Budget. We knew back then that there were concerns about the potential for there to be gaps in funding. I support the moves being made to make the UK Government look at it again, but the Finance Minister missed an opportunity by not referring to it in the draft Budget. If we do not resolve the issue, it will have an impact across Northern Ireland on many issues that multiple Departments are trying to resolve. Including it in the draft Budget would have been the sensible thing to do. I have written to the Finance Minister. I urge him to explore solutions to address the impacts of reduced budgets, and I stand ready to play my part in that.