Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. I am in my office in the Leinster House complex. I thank the witnesses for their opening statement and contributions thus far. I very much welcome the endorsement of the report of the ombudsman and the willingness to so openly embrace its recommendations. For me, it comes down to the stories I have been told. I refer to the constituents and others whom I have met who have experienced terrible delays or have given birth to a child with an obvious disability and yet had to go through an application process to get an assessment of needs. There is no automatic enveloping of that parent and that child with services. I have difficulty understanding why it is not the case that, from the moment of birth, when it becomes apparent that there is a disability, it does not trigger a system. In the context of establishing a standard operating procedure from birth onwards, what are the impediments to having a system such as that in place? Is the difficulty that we do not yet have a database with all of the information on it that would send up flags and trigger particular things?

People really need those supports to be pulled in around them at particular life stages, such as at birth or when disabilities become apparent as developmental stages have not been met. There is a delay in that regard. Some exasperated parents who have been on waiting lists for quite some time go private but their private assessment does not seem to have any effect. I do not suggest that anyone should jump queues and not all parents can afford to go private. However, if a parent does take that initiative, he or she gains no benefit from so doing but is exasperated while trying to get his or her child seen to.

There is also the issue of ensuring there is an assessment of needs with regard to access to school. I have dealt with another issue involving schools which, bizarrely, are divided into a senior and a junior primary school. A child may go into junior infants in the school at five years of age but between second class and third classes, the child has to apply to go to a different school that may be just across the playground from the school the child currently attends and will require another assessment of needs for that. There is also the issue of an assessment of needs that has been carried out within the previous two years but the referral or the internal references are not sufficient. As autism does not go away or evaporate, why can there not be a continuity of care for such children?

I read all the terminology and the reports. I have read the report of the previous Oireachtas joint committee on the initiation and the recommendations that arose when this standard operating procedure, SOP, was being designed. It really about the real-life experience of people. How should this system operate if it were operating properly? If I give birth to a child, what should happen next?