Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will put another question to the Minister of State and while I do so perhaps Mr. O'Connor will be able to dig them out. The Minister of State has responsibility for older people as well as mental health. There is a specific difficulty in dealing with autism and the diagnosis rate of autism among older people because our awareness of autism has only developed in recent years. Has the Minister of State been doing any thinking about how we can counter this? We may not have autism diagnoses among our older people but assuming the incidence rate among older people is the same as among the general population, we could be looking at 3.5% or 4% of people in our older community who have autism. Mental health, isolation and loneliness are all issues the Minister of State is proactive about in her role. We cannot target autistic individuals because they do not have a diagnosis but have we done any specific thinking about applying a lens of autism to these strategies so that we know we are reaching these people?