Dr. Fergal Lynch:

I thank the Senator for her comments. I take her point about a very specific timeframe for the protocol. It is not really possible for me to be very much more specific now but my focus and that of the Department will be on getting the decision support service in place and moving ahead as quickly as we possibly can thereafter. I cannot be too specific because there are individual steps which are not completely in our control. However, getting the decision support service in place first is valuable and a requirement. Then the Attorney General needs to advise on our readiness to ratify the protocol at that point. We will do everything we can to move it as quickly as we can in that context.

To give some further details on the decision support service, the legislation is being worked on and, as I said in my opening statement, we hope that the Minister will be in a position to bring proposals to the Government on this the week after next, 29 June. The general scheme has priority drafting so the aim is to publish the legislation in the autumn term. Our overall aim is to ensure that the legislation is enacted by the end of the year if at all possible. I think that is a realistic deadline. If we can have that legislation in place by the end of the year, in the meantime the decision support service, which the committee met some weeks ago, has been working on putting its processes and structures in place. The deadline of next June is realistic for it to be operational. The specifics of that include an interdepartmental steering group that is chaired by this Department to ensure that the Act can be commenced by next June. The steering group is also supporting the decision support services to become operational by that date. That steering group is important because it includes representatives of the mental health commission, the decision support service itself, the Department of Health, the HSE, the Department of Justice and the Courts Service. There is a concerted effort by all involved to ensure that we are ready, first, with the legislation and, second, with the practicalities and the logistics of ensuring that it happens within the timeframe.

On the access inclusion model, AIM, and how we ensure local access, we have never had a policy of absolutely requiring this access. What we have done is strongly encouraged it in the financial structures that we have offered in AIM itself and the link individuals, that is the people trained as childcare support personnel to work with children with additional needs, we have funded that programme and its training very substantially.

I am not very close to the access to local education and autism classes in the education sector. We can take that back to the Department of Education. We are very conscious of that as an issue. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, recently committed to an autism innovation strategy. The group which will develop that will meet very shortly. I think it is being set up in the next month.