Mr. Nicholas Foote:

I am an adult with autism. I will speak on autistic access to legal services and the Courts Service in Ireland. I have had experience accessing legal services. People in Ireland have the right to legal representation, which is difficult to get hold of as an autistic person. It is difficult to fit into that system.

In navigating legal services in Ireland, I found at first there were zero supports in place. There is no legal point of contact for any autistic person to engage with the legal system. That causes problems. Even the first step, if someone is entitled to legal aid, of going through a legal aid application might prove too challenging for autistic people. There is a lot of form gathering, looking through finances, providing evidence and being organized. Some autistic people might lack those skills and require assistance. If they get the paperwork wrong, there is little tolerance shown in the court. If help was provided with the paperwork, there might be more success with that.

The processes to respond to or instigate legal services are too complex for the majority of autistic people. So many things are going on at once. They have to see this and that professional and compile reports. It is very difficult for an autistic person to do that alone. Help is needed in that area. Once the solicitor is on board, there is evidence gathering. Executive functioning issues are common among people with autism. That makes evidence gathering almost impossible. Many autistic people also have attention deficit disorders, so it can be a harrowing experience to go through all this evidence gathering and it is difficult for them to do so. Once that part is done, when they enter the hearing there is less chance they will get a fair hearing because they have not had help in gathering and indexing the evidence to be ready for that day in court.

On the experience an autistic person might have in court, many will not be able to even enter the court room. There is no assistance for them, such as a familiarisation beforehand, being told what processes to expect like the order of the day or being told the way the questions will be asked of them as witnesses. I have been in the witness box and experienced a mental shutdown. I have not been able to answer questions properly and it has not gone down well. If there was an advocate there to help, perhaps it would not have been a problem in the first place. Cross-examination can easily cause a shutdown or even a meltdown in court. I have not had a meltdown in court, but have had afterwards, especially without familiarisation to the process.

Anxiety caused by autism or associated comorbidities can easily become a problem when waiting for a case to be called or heard in court. I have found there is too much stimulation in the courtroom to be effective by the time my case is called, which tends to be in the afternoon. It feels like looking through a kaleidoscope while listening to proceedings in a foreign language I barely understand. By the time my case is heard, I can barely grasp the questions I am being asked and am not capable of providing a full statement.

It seems there is a big discrepancy between judges. Some are kind to autistic people, while some have no time for them. I do not know what can be done about that but it is something I have experienced. There are no rooms in courts that are autism-friendly. Solicitors sometimes resort to speaking with clients in hallways with many distractions and stimuli that autistic people can find overwhelming. They may not even understand what they are being told. They may be nodding along and not grasping the concept.

I have some ideas to remedy this. First, we could look at an autism application service for legal assistance that sorts whether autistic people are eligible by helping them sort applications and financial paperwork and, if they are eligible, helping fill out a summons if they are the instigator of the case; second, a one-stop shop for autistic people to be matched with a suitable solicitor who has received some basic autism training, even a day course to start with and maybe more in the future; third, a service to provide familiarisation training for autistic people, such as a trip to the courtroom on the evening of the day before, when proceedings are complete. The courtroom could be kept open to give them a familiarisation with it so they know what to expect the next day. It would be fresh in their minds and they would not sit there panicking; fourth, provision of counselling to autistic people to cope or of advocacy in the court for their additional needs; and, fifth, an aftercare service which is able to make referrals to other services. For the bigger court cases that might be life changing, they would need follow-up supports.