Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My first question is a very basic one. Some might say it is even stupid. I have often had discussions with the Minister of State and she has said her job is to advocate for the children. Over the last while she has been torn between the Departments of Health, Education and Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. Can she clarify where we are now with that process and how that is going to feed into the autism strategy? Are those various Departments actively engaging at this point in time?

My second question relates to recruitment. This issue has been mentioned by most speakers today. I will give one example. We were at a CHO 4 meeting recently with HSE management. They told us the average time it takes to hire a home care worker is nine months. I am not trying to demean anyone's work because the work home carers do is very important but we are talking about specialised staff in different therapies. If it takes nine months to hire a home care worker for the HSE, what kind of timeframes are we looking at for filling speech and language therapy posts and so on?

Summer provision has already been mentioned. The Minister of State said earlier that she, similar to myself, supports engaging student therapists and a whole cohort of people working in care health and education to provide that. Why can we not do that? What are we waiting for? We have €40 million that will probably go unspent. Why can we not do it?

My last question relates to children with autism who are prescribed mental health medication. Are they being included in the CAMHS audit following on from recent controversies? Does the Minister of State have any information on that?