Ms Eleanor McSherry:

This is in legislation already in the Disability Act 2005, which took an interdisciplinary approach. As I said already, I was told by a psychologist that the HSE is here and the Department of Education is here. Until they get over themselves everybody will be terrified that they will lose their funding or that something is going to be more important than them. That individualistic thinking has no place in this country anymore. If we want diversity and inclusion for everybody, we have to stop thinking along the lines of, “everybody is coming in on my patch”. That seems to be the attitude.

We see this a little bit in third level education, where interdisciplinary work is changing things, and we have changed our attitude. There is fantastic stuff. I have young people coming out. There are 1,500 students who go through third-level education who are neurodiverse and 600 of those tend to be autistic. My own son is doing a diploma in archaeology through NUI Galway, whereas I had been told that he would never do his junior certificate. That is down to me saying that I am not taking that on the chin, rather than the work of the educational system. There are ways of doing this and we are doing it although everybody else seems to be able to do it. Why then can we not do it? Some of the Departments have to buck up, get over themselves and get over that bridge fast, because what will end up happening is that more autistic people will be at this table, sitting where the committee members are sitting and they will force things, and nobody wants that.