Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As usual, my timing was terrible. My apologies, I walked out of the meeting at the worst possible time. What we have heard is very positive. I am not a member of this committee and I have just imposed myself on it. Probably similar to others here, I have skin in the game. I have an interest in this issue in relation to my son. This is why I take what has been said here in a very positive light in the sense that I am not entirely sure what his trajectory is going to be. I spoke before about how well he is doing in school and the incredible efforts being made by the school as its staff learn as they go along. I talk about moments and completely underplay what some of these moments look like. I do, therefore, realise some of the issues involved. This is accepting that we are dealing with a situation where it is necessary to almost have a bespoke solution for every individual we are talking about.

At this committee, like many other forums before, we have dealt with the lack of services and the early interventions that are not occurring. When it comes to adult services, then, we have heard about whatever services there are before people just tip over the edge. The witnesses' organisations, therefore, are dealing with this aspect of this situation that is missing, for the most part. As positive as these developments are, we are still talking about small numbers. The big issue here, and everyone has alluded to it, is making this endeavour bigger, better, faster and in a more sustainable format. This is what we must do. We know the need we had even five or ten years ago is not the need we have today. The numbers of people coming through are frightening.

Returning to the positives, I will go through them in the order the witnesses spoke about them. I was taken with the idea of independent learning mentioned by Professor Shevlin. This is not to take away from day services or whatever else, but this approach gives people the facility, for the want of a better term, to be all they can be, with all the difficulties that exist. What is impressive about the work placement element is that it looks to be real. I get the worries that employers would have in this context. In fairness, I would not be overly worried about them offending people like my son, if he was in there. The likelihood is that he would offend them. I refer to where the filter does not exist and he will point out the obvious that everyone else would let go. I understand, however, that there is an element of people having to get over these worries and fears. The important aspect is that this is a win-win situation across the board. I was interested to hear there are problems and that they do arise. All we need in this context is to ensure we have decent communication and an element of truth and getting to the point.

It was mentioned that what is wanted is in-business supports, not job coaches. Will the witnesses go into some detail regarding how this would work? Will they tell us about some of the bad situations and how they are rectified? While "bad" is probably the wrong term, I would like to hear about the difficulties. This is accepting what Mr. MacNeill said in the sense of seeing if it is possible to get an advantage and a win in any of this for a family, which would be absolutely huge. Regarding all these endeavours, we need to involve more than ten people over two years. Those are only the first of my 15 questions.