Mr. Bernard O'Regan:

I might add to what Mr. Higgins said. We are in the midst of a fairly significant transformation of how disability services are provided and organised in Ireland. There is a really good suite of policy to underpin the direction of travel throughout children's services, adult services, day services and so on, although there are probably some areas on which we need some further work from a policy perspective. The transfer of functions, taking disability services out of the Department of Health and moving them into the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, creates the potential for a whole-of-government approach to supports for disabled people, including children and adults who are autistic. That is important because, at the moment, the HSE is looked at to be the provider of a lot of services that would be better provided elsewhere. We provide transport services but we are not the Department of Transport, and we provide housing but we are not the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. A system can be expected to provide only so much and that can be stretched, but we now have an opportunity now to ask whether it would be better to have a whole-of-government approach and a whole-Department approach working collaboratively in the best interests of disabled people, older people or whomever we are focusing on. That potential is certainly there and those kinds of things are critical in the type of reform and shifts that are needed in order that we will realise the potential of the convention and provide a community and collaborative model of supports that is not just reliant on conventional service delivery systems.