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

I am going to stand up. I find it very difficult to keep sitting. I agree with much of what was said. It is very worthwhile to hear from the real experts, from autistic people, on how they find the world in which we live. We all agree about what we want to see from the report. First of all, it should deal with all the issues. Whether we are talking about services or the world we live in completely from cradle to grave, there have to be the necessary accommodations. We need to make it accommodating. We need to ensure that people are comfortable and are able to access services.

Mr. Foote spoke about legal services. All the witnesses spoke about healthcare and individual sectors. Obviously, there has been much talk about schools and we all know we do not have enough GPs, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists. We need to ensure the report details everything. Beyond that, it is about introducing those necessary changes. We all understand that the required health and education services are not there. We need to do our damnedest to ensure we get those resources. In the short term we need to be able to provide the best services we can with what we have available. We need to look at all those difficulties such as legal services, accessing GP care or whatever it is.

We all know that these are problems. I am sure this is not the first time that many of us have heard some of these issues. It might be the first time for some of the people listening in. A considerable number of people have been detailing all of these problems for a long time. As Mr. Harris said, it is not just a matter of having a report. The State has been brilliant at producing reports, pilot programmes and schemes that remain as pilots but are never expanded, and society never gets the full benefit of it.

The witnesses have said what needs to be done. The earlier session dealt with a considerable amount. There has obviously been much more input here. We can probably write down all the problems on an A4 page and the solutions on another A4 page. I imagine it will run to a bit more than two A4 pages. Once the report is produced, it is a matter of making sure that we hold whoever is in government to account for delivery. That is just delivering the service and the society that we all deserve and that the witnesses here deserve. That is what we need to do.

I thank all the witnesses for their involvement. I will repeat one of the things I said earlier. We are talking about experts. Some of the people are absolute experts. Some of the people here are involved in support groups that have probably saved and helped many people through some very difficult circumstances. Where we have those sorts of services, we need to look at multi-annual funding and we need to give them support. Where we do not have it, we need to expand something else to provide those sorts of services. I again thank the witnesses. They are absolutely brilliant and because of them we might get to the point that we need to reach.