Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

1 o’clock

I thank Mr. O'Regan for the presentation. To be honest, I am not sure I exited it a great deal wiser than I entered it.

I often talk about how I used to be a primary teacher. I was often the first person a parent met who tried to put a name to what they knew about their child. They knew there was something there but I might be the person to say it was possibly autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia. That is a big thing for a parent to deal with. I used to always try to emphasise that a label does not limit or disable a child; it should enable him or her and be a toolkit giving access to the tools needed to make sure a child reaches his or her full potential. If it is a toolkit, it remains locked until the assessment.

Notwithstanding what Ms O'Kelly said, if we are taking about assessment and standardised pathways, we cannot have that fragmented approach whereby a Teachta Dála such as Deputy Buckley does not know where to begin with a family. I cannot point him to the pathways because it is too fragmented. Ms O'Kelly spoke about referral to a CDNT, but in many areas they are extremely understaffed and struggling to get to the people they already have with outstanding assessments. I do not see how speaking about approaching them informally makes sense, if we are trying to standardise assessment pathways and, after that, pathways to services.

The incidence rate of autism across a population is relatively predictable, whatever figure we take for that. One in 68 is one figure. I would not like to stand over that and do not have the level of expertise to do so. The witnesses will know better. That means in any given cohort of young people moving through school, we should have a clear idea of how many of them are likely to require an assessment. What modelling are we using? What are the best estimates on current need? If we get there, let us work backwards. If we know on a population level how many people in a cohort are likely to need an assessment, how many hours do we need to provide the assessment for that number of people? If we know how many hours we need in order to provide assessment, we know how many staff we need. We have to unlock that toolkit for parents.

Practitioners and GPs up and down the country are meeting parents in that stressed space of knowing something is happening, maybe putting a name to it for the first time and then saying to a parent "I think it might be this but I'm not sure when we're going to get an assessment for you". There may only be two assessments available in that school this year, for example. Then are we telling parents they can go private? Not every parent has the means to go private.

Will the witnesses talk to me about that? We should be able to model across the population how many people are likely to be autistic and, from that, to infer how many hours we need for assessment. From there, we should be able to infer how many posts we need to fill. Will the witnesses give me an answer on some of that please?