Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am personally humbled to be here. I have nothing but admiration for everyone who came in and spoke so honestly here today. It is not easy to come into a setting like this and speak so honestly. I can give them a guarantee on behalf of the committee that their voice will be heard and will be contained in our recommendations. That is extremely important.

Deputy Buckley mentioned that the committee is a very non-political committee. Even though we are all politicians, we are non-political because we all have the one aim which is to make change. The one thing about being in politics is that there is no guarantee of how long we will be in it. As the parent of a young autistic son, I would like that whenever I finish in politics to be able to look back and say that I made a difference for his life and for many other people. It is a goal for me personally to make a difference for him so that he will have a good quality of life.

I am focused on that and will work tirelessly to make sure that happens. That goes across all the committee members and other Members of the Oireachtas who were here today but who cannot be members because of the way the system works with regard to how members are elected to a committee. There are Members who come regularly to meetings and regularly are in contact with me, namely, Senator Currie and Deputy Ó Murchú. They are invested in this and want to see changes made as well.

The whole issue of services is a massive concern for everybody, as is the lack of therapists. I said this in the earlier session. I am member of a Government party but I call it as I see it. As I said earlier, we need to review the Disability Act. We need to enshrine in legislation the right for services, intervention and therapies for everyone. It is a given that we have to do that. We have to make that change. I have no problem saying that publicly and I am a member of a Government party. The Government needs to do that and start the review process straight away. That has to be done.

We have to support the groups. There are numerous support groups that are doing fantastic work for adults and kids that were here both this afternoon and this morning. We need to support them financially. We cannot have people bag-packing, constantly fundraising and spending time trying to fundraise to provide help to young kids and families. We have to put a mechanism in place to make sure that financial support is there. We do not intend this report to sit on a shelf. We want to put a mechanism in place with the Minister of the day, from whichever political party or whomsoever he or she may be, whereby the Minister must regularly report on this. We are looking for a mechanism for an all-party group that will oversee this into the future, into the next Dáil term as well, and that it will be put permanently in place. We have spoken with representatives from Scottish Autism at the recent conference hosted by AsIAm. We are organising for the all-party group, with Scottish Autism representatives, to meet the Minister and look at where they are correcting mistakes that it made in its strategy. We are at a point now where we are devising our strategy. We need to look at where mistakes have been made, make sure we do not make the same ones and start on a positive footing. That is something we will be doing in the next number of weeks.

I thank committee members for the time they put into the committee. We probably have been one of the busiest committees in Leinster House. We were meant to meet on a biweekly basis but we met nearly on a weekly basis, both in public and private sessions, to try to get the work done that we felt we needed to do. I thank members for their time.

I thank the committee staff, including the clerk to the committee, Leo Bollins, Margaret O Donnell and Éanna Gordon. Ellen Dignam Healy was replaced today with John Foyle, another member of the secretariat, who has been out ill the past number of weeks. They are putting in much work behind the scenes, not just for today, but for the committee. I want to put my thanks to them on the record.

I regret not having given an apology on behalf of the Leader of the House, Senator Chambers. She gave her apologies and I forgot to say that at the beginning, so I will just put it on the record now.

I thank everyone for their honesty. On behalf of the members, I give our guests the commitment that we will work to make sure that their concerns are heard in our recommendations. We will put in place a mechanism to make sure this will not sit on a shelf.