Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for everything she has been doing. I like the approach Deputy Rabbitte takes in the Department. The Minister of State has been backed by Government with an increase in budget which always helps but it is not only about money. It is about how measures are rolled out. The Minister of State is certainly taking a hands-on approach with the Department and I appreciate that.

There are a few points I would like to raise. As the Minister of State will be aware, up until February of this year, before I was elected to this House, I was a teacher. There are some overlapping functions, both for Deputy Rabbitte's Department and, indeed, her colleague, the junior Minister, Deputy Madigan. There is an acute shortage of autism spectrum disorder, ASD, units in County Clare. At present, the incidence of autism among children in Ireland, which depends on the level of diagnosis and assessment, is between 1.6% and 2%, but our availability of ASD units is grossly short of that. In a town such as Ennis with a population of 30,000, or Shannon with a population of 10,000, there is only a handful of places. When a unit opens, it only caters for six children. There is a huge shortage.

Increasingly, special educational needs organisers, SENOs, have been going around to schools, speaking with and writing to principals saying that they want them, in September 2021, to open ASD units in their schools. That is brilliant, but there is no accommodation. They are saying to principals that they should find some place in their schools. Some of these schools have not a place for a mop bucket or their physical education, PE, equipment. Suddenly, they are expected to clear out cupboards and find a place for an ASD unit. It will require joined-up thinking, both within the Department of Deputy Rabbitte, as someone who is a champion for disability, and that of the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan. Ultimately, the Department of Education has to also step up and say that this school is willing to provide an ASD unit and it will need additional accommodation.

The next issue I wish to raise is that of SENOs. They wield an awful lot of power when they come into schools. With the Education Act 1998 and the Disability Act 2005, there are many legislative pieces that empower youngsters living with disability and there are many parents who go out and battle for them. I have seen it on many occasions. One sees parents come into one's classroom knowing that they have to fight a battle and they realise pretty quickly that the teacher is onside because we are fighting that battle too. The reality is volumes of paperwork go before a SENO. There is every type of psychological report. There could be occupational therapy reports. With a stroke of a pen, they can strike out many of these recommendations. I made this point in this very room a few weeks ago. In the case of many of the recommendations they are striking out as being invalid or not reaching a threshold, they are not qualified to make that interpretation. I am not an educational psychologist. I am, by profession, a teacher. I am not qualified to go in, dissect a report, and say that makes sense and that does not. There is something wrong in that and Deputy Rabbitte's Department and, indeed, the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, should look at that. They do the same with assistive technology recommendations. They will approve some laptops and some devices and they will strike out others. That is fundamentally wrong.

In March and April, there was a need for speech and language therapists and others to be reassigned to tracing and testing roles. The same occurred with orthodontists and others within the broad spectrum of health services. There was a need for them to be redeployed. They simply had not the caseload coming into their offices. That has changed now. Testing and tracing has changed. There is still a small few, certainly in the mid-west, I know of who are still testing and tracing and we need them back offering the service that they are most qualified to do.

The final question I wish to ask the Minister of State is about the waiting lists in CHO 3, County Clare, and the neighbouring counties of Limerick and Tipperary. I am hoping the Minister of State can give some good news about waiting lists for children who have been awaiting assessments or appointments in that locality.