Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Campbell for presenting to our committee. She has given a very comprehensive report on what is being done in the Scottish Parliament. I think it is a long way ahead of us in Ireland. There is no point in reinventing the wheel and if we can replicate some of the things that Scotland is doing to improve services for autistic people then that is what we should be doing. One of the issues of concern in Ireland at the moment is the lack of assessments and services for children who have or are suspected of having autism. We have roughly 17,000 children on a waiting list to receive an assessment and many more who have received assessments are waiting for services such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology and so on. A progressing disability model was introduced in 2021 which established 91 children’s disability network teams throughout the country but none of these teams is fully staffed because basically, the workforce planning was not done and there is an acute shortage of professionals across those teams and across many other sectors that use those professions as well. How does that compare with Scotland? Are there similar problems or has it a different method of dealing with assessment and services?

It links into education as well. While probably the majority of autistic children attend mainstream schools, some will attend an autism class attached to a mainstream school where there is integration between the class and the mainstream, which is the ideal model, and some will attend special schools. We need to ensure that our education system will be inclusive. Again, what examples of that are there in Scotland? The representatives identified a lot of co-operation across departments. That is something we need to replicate here because we often find Departments working in silos when they should be working together, as services often overlap several Departments.

The other question I have relates to adult diagnosis, which is not available on the public pathway, although a diagnosis or assessment can be privately accessed. Is that an issue? Are there follow-up services to that assessment?