Mr. Michael Hegarty:

To answer Deputy Tully's question on funding, most of which Mr. Doyle has answered, we do not charge anybody to use our services. Nobody is charged in St. Joseph's Foundation. We do not charge the schools or special unit classes when they come. If families wish to make a donation, we will take it and it will support us in providing our services but we do not charge people. Most of the funding comes from the HSE through its sports and recreation funding and we channel it to the Liskennett centre because, as Mr. Doyle has mentioned, the outcomes we are seeing are positive in respect of the cost-benefit analysis and some element of time-related savings also accrues from putting funding into this. The service we provide in Liskennett is unique. As Mr. Doyle has remarked, we hope to replicate that success with a children's alternative regional respite, residential and equine therapy centre in Kanturk. We hope that will open within the next 18 months. We have a waiting list for the Liskennett centre at this point. We hope that more vacancies will be created for children from that side of Limerick as the people who are travelling from Kerry and Cork take up placements in Kanturk. We have people who are literally travelling the length and breadth of the country, particularly on Saturdays when we run open days for which you do not have to book. We have a very significant number of volunteers on Saturdays. On any given Saturday, there could be ten volunteers providing 55 or 60 sessions. Those volunteers work throughout the week and, to their credit, many of them are retired employees of St. Joseph's Foundation. Liskennett has a special place in many of their hearts. One of the volunteers has told me that this is why it easy for him to go back. He enjoys it and gets something very worthwhile and very fulfilling out of it himself, even after spending a whole career working in the service. That speaks for itself.

I will refer to a question regarding a register for autism that Senator Ardagh directed to Dr. Coughlan a number of minutes ago. That should be easy to do because, under the Disability Act 2005, most people who are diagnosed nowadays come through the assessment of need process. The figures are there. I do not believe it would take too much time or effort to create such a register for this committee or the Department of Health to use. That is just my take on that matter.