Mr. Adam Harris:

I thank the Senator. We have now met twice in one day. We really appreciate all the time she has given us. I fully agree; one of the great challenges for our community over the coming decade will be the employment space. There is a real need to move the conversation beyond awareness, with one or two jobs here and one or two pilot programmes there, and towards an ambitious national goal in addressing this. In the UK, the British Government has recently published the Buckland report, an ambitious plan for how autistic employment can be doubled by 2030. That is the sort of ambition we need when we look at the scale of the challenge.

I thank the Senator for her question on the one-stop shop. My colleague Niamh Mellerick and I had the opportunity to visit Scotland last year to see these services in operation. They have been in place since 2005 and have received a really fantastic response from autistic adults and the parents of autistic children. In Scotland, these services were initially introduced to target and support autistic adults where there was no existing service provision. It is a social care-led model and is very much responsive to community need. What will happen in the one-stop shop will directly reflect the priorities for autistic people in that area. A family may present as they are going through the diagnostic process to seek some support in understanding what that process involves. A family may come post diagnosis to set a number of goals with one of our advisers with regard to, for example, accessing education or dealing with a day-to-day living challenge. Autistic adults may come to meet other autistic adults, to explore their identity further or to access a career clinic. There is mix of one-to-one advice-based support and group-based or programmatic support. Our general election manifesto calls for the roll-out of this model nationally. We think that would require a minimum of nine locations. We have costed this at €6 million. We would very much appreciate manifesto commitments in respect of the roll-out of one-stop shops and increased investment in that area.