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How WorkAbility reaches your organisation

WorkAbility is EU co-funded, not Exchequer only. The ESF+ rules (data collection, 4-week and 6-month result indicators, EU visibility, 7-year retention, audit up to the European Commission) apply to you in full. Pobal is the administrator and your contract counterparty: it signs the grant agreement, pays you forward-funded instalments and verifies your records on behalf of the Department. The EU money is claimed on staff, not on outcomes: the Department claims back from the ESF+ by counting full-time staff who work 100% on WorkAbility and at least 0.5 FTE, using a fixed unit cost. So your contracts of employment, job descriptions, payslips and timesheets carry the EU claim, while your participant data carries the reporting. One thing to settle in writing: the published documents disagree on whether your organisation is a data controller or a processor for participant data. Check Schedule 3 of your own grant agreement.

EU co-funded: European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) under the Employment, Inclusion, Skills and Training (EIST) Programme 2021-2027 (CCI 2021IE05SFPR001), Priority 1 Employment, Specific Objective (a), together with the Department of Social ProtectionGrant programme, not a statutory scheme: rights and duties come from the Pobal grant agreement and the Programme Requirements Manual for Grantees (v1.5, from 1 June 2025), which the agreement calls “The Code” · Regulation (EU) 2021/1060 (Common Provisions), incl. Art. 50 visibility penalty · ESF+ Regulation (EU) 2021/1057 · Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1676 (unit cost for employment-related counselling) · GDPR Art. 6(1)(e), 9(2)(b) and 9(2)(a) · Circular 13/2014 (grantee requirements, Schedule 2 of the grant agreement)Programme budget €49,982,105.82 for 2024-2028 across 57 organisations. 2025 allocation €10,035,266.53, of which €8,671,324.70 paid out (Pobal annual summary report 2025). Equipment and assistive technology capped at €12,000 (local), €28,000 (regional) or €63,000 (national) per project. The ESF+ claim to the EU uses a unit cost of €82,053 per full-time staff member (2021 rate, indexed yearly). For context, the whole EIST programme is €1,081,009,996, of which €508,380,024 is ESF+.
One programme, too many disconnected records. Delivery notes, partner decisions, expenditure, results and reporting evidence often sit in different places.

How the money reaches an organisation

Every level here can be asked for its own process map. That is the point of yours.

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European Commission — ESF+ through the EIST Programme 2021-2027
Approved the EIST Programme (€1.08bn in total, €508m from the ESF+). Receives Ireland's expenditure declarations through IEFAS and pays the EU share. Can audit your project directly
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Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science — ESF+ Managing Authority
Runs the EIST Programme. Joint data controller for participant data with the Department of Social Protection. Receives participant indicator data. With the ESF+ Accounting Function, verifies claims before they go to the Commission
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Department of Social Protection
Policy owner and national co-funder, and the body that claims the ESF+ money. Joint data controller. Its Funding and Compliance Unit does management verification at Intermediate Body level on a sample each year, and it submits the expenditure declaration
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Pobal
Administers WorkAbility for the Department. Issues and manages the grant agreement, pays forward-funded instalments, runs the WorkAbility CRM, approves budget changes (two windows a year) and does audit and verification visits. Data processor for participant data
👉 Your organisation sits at this level
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Grantee — the funded organisation (57 in 2025)
NGOs, disability services, local development companies and others. Holds the grant, employs the project staff, registers participants, records every support on the CRM, reports progress yearly and spend six-monthly, and answers for any delivery partner
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Referrers, delivery partners and employers
Referral sources include Primary Care Teams, mental health and day services, special schools, social prescribing, community groups and public employment services such as Intreo. Delivery partners need a written partnership agreement. Employers offer work experience and jobs
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Participants — people with disabilities aged 16 and over
Self-declared disability, no upper age limit, not yet work-ready or distant from the labour market. In 2025, 4,616 people were engaged at some point, 2,550 of them new starters
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Audit chain
Built upward. Your records (signed registration forms, timesheets, payslips, invoices, bank statements) → Pobal verification, on site, on behalf of the Department → the Department's Funding and Compliance Unit, sample verification at Intermediate Body level → the ESF+ Managing Authority and Accounting Function → the European Commission. The ESF+ Audit Authority audits claims on a sample basis, on site. Alongside, with their own right to come in: the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Commission's auditors and the European Court of Auditors. Keep everything for 7 years from the end of the delivery period, or until the Department tells you otherwise

Process maps under this programme

Where this came from

Human reviewed2026-10-26Automatically checked2026-10-26Current source statusMonitoring starts at the next check

Read against the source on 2026-10-26. This is the human-reviewed version.

What that check changed: Programme name: the brief called it "WorkAbility — Inclusive Employment and Enterprise Programme". Every primary source uses "WorkAbility: Inclusive Pathways to Employment Programme". The map uses the official name. Budget: news and partner pages quote "up to €36.29 million" from the 2023 call. Not confirmed in a primary source we could read (gov.ie returned 403). The map uses Pobal's own 2025 figure of €49,982,105.82. Why the budget rose is not confirmed. Participant target: the Manual says "up to 5,000 people"; the 2025 annual report says an overall target of 13,516. Both are Pobal documents. Neither number is used in the map. Spend 2025: the report gives €8,671,324.70 paid out, but its own category table totals €9,206,499.79. Not reconciled; only the allocation and paid-out figures are shown. Data roles: the Privacy Notice names DSP and DFHERIS as joint controllers and Pobal as processor. The Manual calls grantees both "Data Controllers" and "Data Processors". The 2026 consent form names the Implementer as a joint controller. Not resolved; the map tells grantees to check Schedule 3 of their own agreement. Not confirmed: the EU co-financing rate for WorkAbility (EIST uses 40% in more developed regions per a gov.ie press release we could not open). Left out. Not confirmed: any formal appeal route or time limit for a participant refused a place or exited. The Manual says disputes are for the grantee and the individual to resolve. No Social Welfare Appeals Office route applies, because this is not a welfare decision. Not confirmed: whether taking part affects a social welfare payment. The programme documents are silent; the map tells people to ask Intreo before starting paid work. Left out: the Manual's footnote that at least 25% of participants should be long-term unemployed, 50% female and 60% aged 18–29. It does not fit a disability programme with no upper age limit and looks carried over from another programme. Left out: the €200,000-a-year grant cap. It appears in secondary pages; the 2025 report says allocations "for the five-year funding period range from €61,953 up to €200,000", which is ambiguous. Not identified by name: the ESF+ Audit Authority and Accounting Function. The Manual names their role but not the body.

We built this map from information publicly available online — official guidelines, programme documents and the law — following the Vedomia method: we write down only what a source says, and we say where a source is silent. It is not official guidance. Your contract, your funder’s current rules and local practice can differ; check them before you rely on it.