Step Ahead Plus: New Track - Online Group Information Session

Fresh Pathways for ABI Survivors

Ireland records one of the European Union’s widest disability employment gaps. As of late 2025 the employment rate for working-age people with disabilities stands at 32.6%, half the EU average of 51.3%. Acquired brain injury accounts for a substantial share: 120,000 residents live with lasting ABI-related disability while strokes, trauma and tumours add roughly 19,000 new cases annually.

For many survivors the injury ends prior careers. Cognitive fatigue, memory issues and the need to disclose an often invisible condition create steep barriers to starting again. The New Track component of ABI Ireland’s Step Ahead Plus service is built for precisely this cohort—those seeking fresh employment or education rather than returning to an old role.

Five-year funding secured in 2024 through the WorkAbility programme has shifted the offering from regional pilots to a national telehealth model. The programme, part of the EU’s 2021-2027 Employment, Inclusion, Skills and Training framework and matched by the Department of Social Protection, cleared a 160-person waiting list reported in 2023 and now runs regular eight-week cohorts through 2028. Earlier data from 234 participants between 2021 and 2023 showed 53% moving into paid work and 21% into education or training.

The stakes are both personal and fiscal. Prolonged unemployment for this group deepens welfare dependency, mental-health strain and lost productivity in an economy already short of labour. Targeted occupational-therapy assessment followed by symptom management, disclosure coaching and accommodation planning has demonstrably lifted outcomes where generic schemes fall short.

Non-obvious tensions remain. EU grant conditions enforce strict eligibility verification—including documentary proof of primary ABI diagnosis and age over 16—to safeguard public money and meet inclusion metrics. These rules add bureaucratic steps that can delay entry for people whose needs are urgent yet complex. At the same time, employers continue to underestimate invisible impairments; fatigue alone remains the single biggest reported obstacle, far outranking physical limitations in Irish studies. Specialist programmes therefore sit in an uneasy middle ground: more effective than broad-brush initiatives, yet constrained by the very funding rules that make them possible.