Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 18 October 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Autism
Autism Policy and Health: Health Service Executive
Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. O'Regan for his presentation and for the other interventions as well. They are helpful. I want to try to get a better understanding of where the school inclusion model pilot is. When it was initially set up in 2018 by, I think, the then Minister, Deputy Bruton, the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, was looking at employing two co-ordinators and then the assumption was that the specialists and the therapists would come from the HSE. I am checking out information going back to 2021, when 31 speech and language and occupational therapist, OTs, were to be recruited by the NCSE. Has there been a shift? I am listening to some of the witnesses' language and I hope I am not quoting Mr. O'Regan incorrectly by saying that he said that one cannot put something into every school. I totally understand the challenges around this, but where are we with that pilot? We are four years into it. I know there is an independent evaluation being carried out at the moment by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. Maybe that is finished. Is that evaluation finished or is it ongoing?