Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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First and foremost, the review that is currently taking place was commissioned by the HSE in March 2021. The full review will be complete by March 2022. There will be an interim review after six months to see how progress is going. That process is under way. One could say we are nearly a quarter of the way into the review.

Second, the Senator referred to CHOs that have cleared their backlogs. It is important to acknowledge the work the CHOs have done. Areas such as CHO1, CHO2 and CHO4 have actually cleared their backlogs. One has to realise that when I first launched this, we had just come out of the first lockdown. We then went into a second lockdown and there has since been a third. The challenges under which the HSE has worked under during all of this have been unbelievable. The biggest challenge was from January to date for the simple reason that clinicians did not have access to the classroom setting. In certain cases, they need access to the classroom to be able to see how the child engages and so on. It is the observational part of the assessment.

As regards the status of the other CHOs in terms of the roll-out, CHO3 is at 89% of the clearing of its backlog, CHO5 is at 80%, CHO6 is at 93%, CHO7 is at 76% and CHO9 is at 53%. Those are the up-to-date figures for April. I have just received them. I thank the parents involved, who may have had to embrace new methods of engaging on an assessment. Not all of it was done face to face. Technology played a significant role in that regard. I thank the parents for embracing that part of it and the clinicians for engaging on the technology side.

The Senator asked about the autism innovation strategy I launched at the start of autism month. It comes under four elements, namely, health, education, employment and housing. The whole idea is to have members and organisations that represent autism form part of a stakeholder group in conjunction with the various members of the Departments.

I said this in my speech. My plan is that I will chair it. I will not say exactly where it is going to go, but the whole idea is to set ourselves targets that we know are achievable and measurable in areas that have been frustrating service users and organisations for the last number of months or however long it has been. I call them low-hanging fruit that need to be tackled. Perhaps the fact is that we do not get the buy-in from another Department. That is the reason I am going to chair the group. Then there can be no excuse, such as that a Minister will not return a phone call or a Department is not freed up. I will call them out on it. I have set the target. There are four different Departments. I am already within the Department of Health, so I am working on that piece, and it is only three other Departments. If I get the same response as I have got within the Department of Health, I know we can get this job done.

The autism innovation strategy might not have been what everybody wanted. Deputy Ó Ríordáin asked me to take note during the debate on a Private Members' motion introduced by the Labour Party that recently came before the Oireachtas. I have been taking note since I came into office. I have been meeting with families and stakeholders and I know what the issues are. They are housing, health, education and employment. We must listen and engage, and we need the other Departments to work with us. I have no doubt we will get there.