Dr. Graham Connon:

That decision is part of the national access policy that was agreed by the HSE between disability and primary care services. The criteria relate to people's level and complexity of need, and whether those need to be addressed by an interdisciplinary team or in a unidisciplinary manner in primary care. Those are the criteria that are assessed when deciding whether someone with a disability, or autism in this case, should access primary care or the children's disability network team. Services have been consolidated, so everyone should be able to access one of those services, so there should be no cracks to fall through. There is always a possibility that services will disagree on criteria. A mechanism called an integrated children's services forum, ICSF, is built into the policy, which will resolve any disputes if services disagree on those criteria. A decision will be made in that forum and a service will be assigned. Those forums are in the process of being set up around the country. We will hear about how they are doing. Anecdotally, I can tell the Senator that where they have been set up, there has been a much lower than expected level of referral to integrated children's services forums. Once clinicians understand how the referral process works, there seems to be very little disagreement. Several forums have been cancelled because no disputes have been referred to them. We are getting better at that. It is a positive development.