Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I appreciate Deputy Crowe's kind words. For me, the simple answer would be for the Oireachtas to push forward on the incorporation of the UNCRC. This would mean that if anyone who wanted to strike out recommendations made by a qualified professional would have to consider the best interests of the child and determine whether the rights of the child are still being supported without the recommendations that had been put forward. That is something that could be championed across the Oireachtas and it is how I hope this issue could be tackled.

Deputy Crowe mentioned schools and I have come across many high-quality schools, particularly at primary level, in relation to the assessment of needs, where often boards of management will fund private assessments for children and where the teachers and parents work together to make things happen. That is an example of Irish people finding a way to make things happen, despite the system, and it should not be this way. The gathering together of funds to make a private assessment, and then to find that the assessment is not necessarily accepted, regardless of the standing of the person who is writing the assessment, is a real step backwards.

I take the Deputy's point about how visible disabilities are more easily championed. Dyspraxia and dyscalculia are just as traumatic for children and young people and harder to find and diagnose.

Even having to think about being diagnosed in this regard can be difficult.

The physical aids and assistive technology have the same principle. If everybody in the system is making a decision based on the best interests of the child, it should be easy to follow the logic and pattern behind it. It comes from the system allowing it. It comes from legislation and parents having the right to sue or take up the statutory obligation to their child's rights. If we can provide a system such as this, it really will be supportive of the child in this regard. This is a real way of thinking about and believing in our children that would support them. Similarly, it would change the way they enter the adult services. If we have statutory obligations to follow the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and put children's rights at the heart of our decision-making, there will be no way they should get as far as the age of 18 or 19 without knowing where they are moving to and what systems and services are in place for them at that stage because we will have set ourselves up as a society that really puts children at the heart of decision-making.