Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Vice Chair. I appreciate that. I will be as quick as I can. From Mr. McLoughlin, it is really striking the worry about the future and planning. Everything he said is valid and I support it 100%. In recent weeks, especially after the Donegal report, parent after parent has contacted me worried about what it says. Where are the HSE, HIQA and all the services the State throws billions at? The forward planning for our citizens from the moment they are born, all the way through their lives, appears absent. One problem is we have a lack of a transversal approach in policy, that everything is so siloed that a person must apply to multiple services across different Departments. The answer is in Mr. Doyle's proposal of elevating the Ministry to a full stand-alone Department, but that would have to have the authority across State bodies that report to different Departments. We just passed a Bill that moves an aspect of child services relating to school liaison to the Department of Education. It happens in other areas, so there is no reason it should not happen here.

The distress caused to families is outrageous, and I have been appalled by it, even before I became a Senator. It is an area I am particularly passionate about. There is a dearth of services for autism in Dublin South-Central or places for autistic children in schools. I am horrified that from the moment of birth, there is no continuity. It may take a couple of years for autism to be manifest, but most parents have an instinct very early on. The services should be there and it should be streamlined. We are not inventing the wheel. This is not something new, like Covid, that we suddenly have to react to.

I sat with a mother last year who had just given birth to a child with Down's syndrome. The things she had to apply for to prove her child had a disability were shocking. I know that is completely separate to autism but it is an ableist privilege attitude. That has come out over recent weeks as we have heard lived experience. I really take Mr. Harris's point. Covid brought it home. It is time we started using that language. While it is shocking in 2021 to hear the word "eugenics" used in an Oireachtas committee, that language needs to be brought out. We need to say this is what is going on.

I am very struck by Ms Kearns's submission and the analogy and the equivalence to gay conversion therapy. I can back that up with an experience I had recently. I went to an event with WALK in Drimnagh celebrating peer advocacy and representation among its service users. One person after another stood up to advocate on behalf of their particular issues. One participant spoke of how he masks his disability, that he spends his life pretending it is not there. It is loosely connected to what Ms Kearns was talking about, but it is very striking, and we should not have a world where people have to pretend they are something they are not. We should have a world where there is inclusion. There are opportunities, such as this committee and the passion of its members, which has a voice to support the voices of the witnesses, because it should be about their experiences, with them being at the centre of all the decision-making and the rest of us here to serve and respect that.

I do not have questions I just wanted to row in behind that. When I read the equivalence with gay conversion therapy, it resonated with me because of what I heard at the WALK event that evening and the idea that people have to pretend.

The lack of planning is shocking and I will now go to the Seanad Chamber to say all that. I thank the witnesses and apologise that I will miss their responses, but I will view the debate later. The witnesses are welcome to contact me via my office. I will do what I can during my time in the Oireachtas - hopefully it will be a long time - to speak out on this.