Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank all of our guests for coming in today. The great value of this committee is that we get to hear of the first-hand, lived experience. What Ms Jones started off her submission with really struck me. She should not need to be here. There will always be a role for emotional support across parent groups, especially when parents first get that diagnosis, and for a sharing of experience and knowledge but parents should not be sourcing services themselves. They just should not have to do that. They have enough to do without that.

As Ms O' Mahony said to this committee, there must be much more of a focus on the child. The support services have to follow the child. I was looking at an organisational management chart recently and was reminded of it when mention was made of the NCSE. Just in terms of education alone, there are so many pieces to such charts. That is not to mention autism, where one is also dealing with health services, speech and language therapy and so many other bits and pieces and it is so fragmented. I do not know how parents manage to get their heads around it, especially new parents.

Ms Lowndes spoke about the situation in schools. I was a primary school teacher for 15 years before I arrived here but I know that if I was put into an autism classroom, I would feel like I was at the bottom of the mountain again. I would be relearning my job from scratch. I have talked to primary school teachers who are in autism classrooms. They are afraid to go out sick or to take time off for training because they know that a substitute teacher will arrive into the classroom and even with the best will in the world, that is going to be so disruptive for the children. As a result, they are turning up to school in all sorts of conditions in order to provide the best service they can with the training they have and the facilities that have been provided.

There are so many issues that we could focus on, including summer provision which is very important, but I want to talk about the CDNT structures. To pick up on what Deputy Flaherty said, I do not think that Longford is on its own in this regard. As I said to Ms O'Mahony, I know of one school in Waterford where children in the autism classroom are going to three different CDNTs within the county. The principal of the school would love to see the services provided within the school. My God, the children are there. Could we not have speech and language therapy provided in the school? Could we not have occupational therapy provided in the school? What is our guests' experience of the new CDNT structure? Is it working for parents and the schools? Is it working for everybody within the system who should be providing wraparound supports to children? When I was a primary school teacher I taught children with autism and I, like most people within the system, wanted to do my very best for them but I was not always able to put my hands on the levers that I needed. I was not always able to figure out the pathway to talk to people in CAMHS, to talk to the SENO or to the NEPS psychologist. There are so many bits on that organisational flowchart. I ask our guests to share their experience of the CDNT structure. Is it working for parents? Is it working for children?