Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I wish everyone a good morning and I thank them all for coming here and making their presentations. I believe that all of the issues spoken of by our guest contributors are matters we have covered in this committee as indeed has the Joint Committee on Disability Matters but we cannot cover and highlight them enough, or try to tease them out, because there is still a great deal of work to be done.

Dealing with children first, a number of our guest speakers mentioned inclusive education and moving towards that. When parents with children with a disability of different sorts or with autism hear the words "inclusive education", they get very scared because they think of their child going into a mainstream school and being totally lost in the system. That is because there are not enough supports. Are we moving any closer to inclusive education where children can attend a mainstream school, can have the sufficient supports, and that they will be comfortable in doing that? Children with very complex needs may always need a special school but there are many children, and I have even spoken to parents of children who went to a special school who felt that their children regressed and would have been better placed in a mainstream school. The supports, however, were not there in the mainstream schools to give them that support.

Also, on the issue of the assessment of need, AON, there is in fact a briefing this afternoon on the updated AON process.

Dr. Muldoon mentioned a review of the Disability Act. It was supposed to work in tandem with the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act, which is currently being reviewed and which was never fully commenced. Again, some people would be scared that a review would lead to an undermining of the statutory right to an AON and many believe that it should be strengthened to include a statutory right to services. However, in the current situation, we do not have enough people in children's disability network teams, CDNTs to carry out assessments and to provide the services. Are we going to end up in a worse position than we are? This comes down to a lack of workplace planning and I know that that is being addressed. We are told now of increased places through college but it will take a number of years for those people to qualify.

I would like to see increased co-operation between disability services and schools. They seem to work in silos and one will have people in the disability sector telling us that a child does not need an assessment of need to get the services they require. However, in order to get into a school and to get the supports they require, they do need a diagnosis. We need to see closer co-operation between those two sectors and I am unsure if we are moving any closer to that.

On adults, many autistic adults will say that they have an invisible disability so people will not recognise that they have a disability. I am finding in respect of housing that that is an issue. AsIAm will say that they have many queries again around help required to get on to the housing list, where autism is not recognised as a medical condition for priority listing on the housing list. Has any of our contributors received any complaints in respect of that? AsIAm also tell me that its members find it overwhelming trying to fill up all of these forms and to put all this information together. I believe there is a lack of understanding in many local authorities dealing with housing and I ask how that might be overcome.

On the personal transport support, Mr. Deering spoke about the Grounded report. Unfortunately, things have not moved on and at the moment we have only one personal transport scheme, which is the disabled drivers and disabled passengers scheme, which is much too stringent as no autistic person would even be considered for that scheme because of the criteria. In fact, many disabled people with quite significant physical disabilities are not even considered. Again this is frustrating. There is supposed to be a new scheme coming on board but we are ten years on from the others, we are in a state of suspension, and the schemes are not being replaced.

I have made a number of comments there, I am conscious of time and I do not want to go on any more. I could go on for hours on all of these issues but I am conscious that there are many other people here also. I thank the Chair.