Mr. Gerry Kerr:

I thank Senator Seery Kearney. She gets it. She has spoken very eloquently on the seismic change she is looking for and the philosophical change required in how we approach it.

As to the question on value for money, it would be remiss of me not to mention autism and personal assistance. We have mentioned the latter. There was a capacity review by the HSE this year. It reckons it needs an extra €1 billion to fulfil its plans. If we were to have an increase in the number of personal assistants, we would be speaking about something like €10 million or €12 million. It would be money well spent if the committee could push for this sort of expansion.

With regard to autism my heart goes out to people. A number of my friends have children with autism and it seems that, particularly during Covid, children with autism have been so neglected in Ireland unless people have plenty of money to buy an assessment, buy physiotherapy, buy speech therapy or buy occupational therapy. I do not want to sound extreme but what happens to a lot of children is that they do not begin to get services until late primary school. By the time they are going to secondary school they are dysfunctional and they drop out. In contrast, if we could put whatever extra money is available into early services, it would mean these children will face a life where they can have jobs, they can have relationships and they can be productive and happy. Perhaps they would not end up in residential settings for intellectually disabled people. I will push this one with Senator Seery Kearney also.