Ms Catherine Cox:

The year has been difficult for everybody but the association has seen many come to it who are suffering financially, which would not have been so much the case prior to last year. That was so much so that we set up what we called a hardship fund. It was funded through the corporate sector, the likes of Irish Life and Tesco because, unfortunately, the funding was not available from the Government. Just last week we paid for a parent to have her child assessed for autism because she would have been waiting two years, were she to go through the health system. Her child wants to get a place in school and cannot get it until an assessment is done. To me, that is shocking. That tells another story of the inadequate services and supports that are there for families, parents and carers. We have seen so many exceptional circumstances in the past year.