Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a few comments. I meet parents of children and young adults with autism all the time so I am familiar with all that has been presented by the witnesses.

I welcome the SOP but I have concerns. The fact that parents and the witnesses were not consulted is indicative of what is happening. That shows where the problem is. People are not being consulted while others are in little huddles making these decisions. There must be a paring back of that. Time and again I have seen parents and families described as problem families, "Everything is okay but they are problems". I was alarmed the other night to hear one of the national autism services staff say that it is unfair on people and parents who speak out because it means that the others who do not speak out do not get the services. My God, where are we going with all of this? We must work together.

The CSO figures have to be inclusive of children and young adults with autism. We cannot ever hope to address this issue if we are unable to quantify it. All of us must work together to try to get that done. All sorts of nonsense is included in the CSO figures. This issue is not going away and we need to confront and tackle it together. I want to know where the experts in autism trained. I find that many of the services have no expertise in autism and they operate on an ad hocbasis. I can only speak for the west, where I am from. It was suggested to me once that if one does not have expertise in the area, trying to make a child with autism eat cabbage is like asking me or somebody else to eat glass. There has to be an understanding of what the condition brings with it and unless we have the trained experts who can then deliver further training down through the system to ensure everybody is trained, we will not tackle it.

There is a long journey ahead on this. We will continue to work. We are meeting with all the national groups on trying to tackle this issue in an inclusive, progressive and timely way. Time is running out for many of these children. Time is also running out economically. As was said earlier, the cost of not having early diagnosis and early intervention will be phenomenal in the future. Leaving aside the humanity of it, the economic nonsense around all of this must be tackled.

I am sorry that the witnesses will not have time to reply but we will get an opportunity to talk again.