Ms Tara O'Donnell-Killen:

I thank the Deputy for everything he said. There is nothing I would disagree with. I agree with everything. I will add to the record a point it might be interesting to know. We need diagnosis in order that people can access support, because society has not be designed with universal access in mind. That is when legally reasonable adjustments, as we call them, can be made to make society a little more accessible. The reason we keep homing in on the point about neuro-affirmative and human rights-based training is that Thriving Autistic commissioned an anonymous online survey of autistic adults who are accessing therapy to find out what barriers and helpers they were finding in getting supports. The absolute number one barrier to accessing therapeutic support was concerns that the therapist did not understand how to support an autistic person. That is the number one barrier. That is why we keep talking about training. A very close second was cost. The third top concern people had was that if the therapist did understand how to support autistic people, the autistic person was not respected. Both of those issues came in strongly. The human rights-based approach and training are important. We need the diagnosis because the system is not universally accessible but we also supports to come from a human rights-based lens. The final point is that our report echoes what Dr. Mary Doherty and Autistic Doctors International found in their barriers to healthcare report with regard to telephone calls. In our survey, more than 66% of people mentioned putting off accessing mental health support because of having to make a telephone call. When we switched the question around and asked what would make it easier, online booking was the number one preference for making appointments.

That could really help to reduce barriers.

We have information here. We have a pathway, as the members are all saying, if we can get people together in a room with the will to make it happen, and follow through. There is something really special that we could do here in Ireland to lead the way for other nations.