Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I was struck by what Mr. Harris said in his introduction about being equal, valued and accepted, and the use of the words "accessible" and "inclusive". That applies across all disabilities and it is what we have to strive for. Both committees have to make sure the Government puts the funding in place and makes changes to ensure we have a society like that. There was a significant increase in the disability budget to €2.4 million yesterday, which I welcome, but it is still not enough. For parents on waiting lists for assessments of needs, in particular, an extra €39 million has been set aside to try to clear the backlog of thousands of children throughout the country who are still waiting for such an assessment.

There have been changes. Supermarkets now have a two-hour slot where the light is dimmed and the audio is down. A lot of changes have been made but one issue I have found, and I have written to every local authority about it, is the fact we do not have any hidden disability car parking places. We have disability car parking places, for which there must be a badge on the car, but there is none for hidden disability. Something that I would like to push on is that every local authority, when putting in new parking places, would place them adjacent to a disability space for parents, beside a supermarket or whatever. That is something that needs to be put in place. We have made moves on this with regard to Leinster House. I spoke to the Clerk of the Dáil in the past week. Sometimes, things can move very slowly within the Government so we want to speed that up and implement it over the next number of weeks. When witnesses come to our committee and to Leinster House, some of whom are autistic persons, it is important that it should be in place. We are ten years behind Stormont. That is not acceptable.

I welcome the DCU project. I look forward to seeing that rolled out throughout the country and across all third level institutions. Many advances have been made and funding has been put in place by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science as regards putting in sensory rooms and making our third level colleges more accessible for young autistic persons. Work on 20 autism-friendly towns was mentioned. We should put funding in place to make sure that every town in the country is an autism- and disability-friendly town. That is a minimum.

I have a couple of points and questions. I apologise if I am going on too long. Mr. Kenny mentioned EVs. I am a father of young children and the sound of EVs and, in particular, not being able to hear them, is an issue. I ask for a comment on that. On the census, I firmly believe we need to change the form so we can future-proof our need for services. We have an issue at present regarding our children's disability network teams, where we do not have a significant number of professionals, such as occupational therapists and speech and language therapists, coming through our system. That is the fault of the HSE. It is not future-proofing the supply of professionals we need across those teams to provide services for children.

It was mentioned that the NDA is the only organisation of its kind in the world. In the NDA's interaction with the Government and implementation of what it proposes, where are the blockages for it not being implemented?

I have a question on housing for Mr. Cawley, my fellow proud Longfordian, who I have known for a long number of years and who is a very strong advocate. We spoke about local authorities building houses. Are we building houses that are accessible? Do they have level-access showers downstairs and so on? It is not happening enough. We have to put significant funding in place to adapt houses at a later date. If level-access showers were put into every single house, we would not have to adapt houses at a later stage. I ask for comments on those points.