Mr. Ray O'Mahony:

I thank the Chairman for inviting us to the meeting. It has been very uplifting to hear all the stories. It is tough work, and knowing the dedication that others parents have, like us, put in reassures us we are not alone.

To add to what Laura said, we can speak only from our personal experience. I am new to autism. Our son is six, and we have been investigating it since he was diagnosed. It has been a case of trial and error and we have seen the services, unfortunately, drop off after the initial diagnosis. We had to spend €1,200 just to get him labelled as autistic to open access to the services, and we have then found that a lot of the services are just not there. For example, our son is non-verbal, so he has a speech and language therapist assigned to him. My assumption was this would be a good contact to approach to help him learn to speak, but she advised me that was not the case. I pushed back on and suggested she could see how it could be misleading that, despite her being a speech and language therapist, there were no speech and language therapy sessions.

That is just one example. My wife and I and other parents are all about finding solutions. We know there is a problem and we know there is no wise old man or Mary Poppins figure who will resolve everything. My wife and I have carried out a lot of individual testing our son. He has a lot of gut-related issues and we have gone through his paediatrician in that regard. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of creative investigation into children who have a lot of issues internally. To give one example, during our research, we sent some hair samples to the US and the results that came back indicated some of the metals were off the charts. How can matters such as that not be investigated here?

There is so much to talk about but I might bring one point to the committee's attention. We have been engaging with a school in Wales, Ysgol Y Deri, and its headteacher, Chris Britten. I would advise the committee to research it. It is the largest school in the UK that deals with special needs and it carries out a lot of creative engagement with kids who are non-verbal and have severe issues. The dedication and resources it has could be a good model for the committee to study. Mr. Britten has indicated he is open hosting us or any public representatives who want to tour the school and see exactly what it does. Perhaps it is something we could apply here. Every parent has their individual story and we are here to help the committee. We are here to engage with it, share our knowledge and, I hope, create solid foundations for all the children in our country.