Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 March 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Autism

Services and Supports Provided by the State for Autistic People: Discussion

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

I apologise for being late. I was meeting a Danish delegation but excuses are not much use to our witnesses. I took an interest in this issue because my son Turlough is autistic. People have come to me and said "you're Turlough's dad" so that is the reason they want to have a conversation with me. Obviously I am not shocked by what the witnesses said. There is acceptance across the board that they, their children and their students are being failed, which is not good enough. We know we need to look at the school piece, which has been dealt with in fairness. We are looking at probably a number of outlier educators who are here alongside outlier parents. I can only say really good things about my son's school. He is 14 and in first year. They are learning from him as much as he is learning in the school. We should all be in a better place but that is what works when everybody is trying.

Do we have all the supports? We know we need in-school therapies. We know the problem between assessments and interventions and that we need a significant recruitment drive but even if everything was done perfectly from today onwards, we are probably looking at four or five years before we have a sufficient number of speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists. Deputy Tully is right. A number of experts in their field appeared before the committee and told us there needs to be a conversation with them regarding what we can do in the short term and what are the best services we can provide. That will mean brokering and a real conversation with parents in the sense that we do not have everything we should have and we need to do our best and put that in place. In the short term, however, we can definitely do better than we are doing at the moment. We owe it to ourselves and children not to continue with the failures.

Fair play to the witnesses. It is wonderful to hear about support groups because in some cases, they are the bale and twine that keeps the engine going. They are keeping a huge number of families going, which is brilliant. We just need more of it. We need to do more and be better and faster on everything. People like the witnesses will make a real difference that will eventually lead to the change that is necessary.

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