Ms Helen Holmes:

In respect of funding, as Senator Seery Kearney will be well aware, we run two groups, namely, a campaign group and a support group for parents, and funding tends to be on the latter side. We try to source experts such as OTs, SLTs and psychologists ourselves, negotiate a fee with them and bring them in to talk to parents to help them fill that gap. Parents are very frustrated waiting around, so we try to help out as much as we can. Next month, a speech and language therapist will come on board to run a couple of workshops with the parents, which will be brilliant.

There is a cost to that. Families are going through difficult times, like every family in the country at the moment with the rising costs of everything, and we try to keep the costs as low as possible. We do not receive any HSE funding, so we approach local agencies such as Dublin City Council or Dublin South City Partnership to see if they can support us with anything like that relating to education and empowering parents. Otherwise, if the cost is too high, it means the parents bear the costs and they are not always able to do that.