Mr. David Doyle:

On the numbers, we produced 13,304 sessions in our equine centre last year. We have 25 horses. We provide services to 56 schools. I am talking about the special autism units within schools. This comes to 103 classes because some schools may have two or three classes. We take four schools every morning. Schools finish around 2 p.m. so we start at 10 a.m. and run different sessions between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. When the children come for equine therapy, it is not just about coming to the centre to ride and groom horses. It is an experience. Even though the session lasts an hour, they can spend four hours at the centre. It does not matter. There are sensory walks and other animals. It is an experience. They have their lunch at the centre and there is music going on. We have drums they can beat and all of that. That is the sessions with the schools.

We obviously provide services to St. Joseph's Foundation residential and day services but we are also open to external agencies and parents can come themselves. We have open Saturdays for which booking is not required. The whole family comes to the service from 9.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Not only can the child or adult with autism ride and experience the day, but the whole family comes too. Mam or Dad can ride. We find it to be a meeting place at which the whole family can meet other families in similar situations, which is of real benefit to them.

I am coming from my own personal experience because, as Mr. Hegarty has said, my own girl, who is 28 now, was diagnosed when she was four. She had three staff with her at all times. Services may be poor now but back then they were very poor and she was expelled from most schools. We ended up in a special school with St. Joseph's Foundation. Since then, new mainstreaming units have been set up. From our perspective, these have been really successful. The teachers, SNAs and other staff are highly motivated and we can see the difference. Because of equine therapy and other services - equine therapy is not an alternative but and additional service that helps - including working closely with psychologists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists, my daughter is now sharing a staff member. From a monetary point of view, as we are talking about funding, three staff members working 24-7 at a cost of €250,000 each per year costs a total of €750,000. To save two staff members results in very significant savings. The cost-benefit analysis is positive. I am only taking about her because she is all I am entitled to talk about here but we have seen other differences.

From a funding point of view, the HSE has funded some of our staff. We have three staff funded by the HSE. Our Saturday is funded by alternative respite services. We also have adult education funding from the education and training boards, ETBs. We get six days of help under the ETBs' adult programmes. We do not get any money for horses but we do not pay for them. They are all donated ex-racehorses, ex-show jumping horses and so on. It takes them approximately nine months to join our programme.

On the question of whether there are other services like ours around, Mr. Hegarty might follow up on that permission from the Government to open a new service in Kanturk, County Cork. It is a model of service that we are promoting. There will be a respite house that accommodates four children with autism and a residential house for four further children. These will be children on level 3, which the Deputy was talking about, who exhibit challenging behaviour. We excel at dealing with children with challenging behaviour. We have just got permission to start with that. We are hoping to apply for planning permission in the next week or two. We do not get money for horses. We get donations for that. The schools are great because, while we do not get money directly from the Department of Education, the schools run collections and so on.