Ms Nuala Geraghty:

On the lifespan of the dogs, they go to families fully trained aged approximately between 16 and 20 months and will work, if they are fit and healthy, up to approximately ten years of age. At that stage, we do yearly visits to make sure they are still fit and healthy enough to work. We offer a replacement dog, or a successor dog as we call them. It is not for everyone. It is assessed for each case individually. When the dog is coming up to retirement we discuss it with the family. If the family needs the dog, it will go through a reassessment and if the family passes that, it will get a successor dog and will have priority on the waiting list.

I touched a little earlier on the referrals. People or families just have to apply to us. At the moment we reopen the waiting list once a year. It has recently been reopened. People attend a webinar and at the end of that they receive a code to apply.

We open the waiting list and give a set time and date and people apply. There could be a couple of hundred people who apply but we only have 30 places because what we say is that we want to be able to give them a dog within 18 months of them applying and we do not want them hanging on. Then 30 places are allotted in a lottery and the people who are not successful have to reapply the following year. We have criteria, so age would come into it and the child has to be aged between four and 12 years and have an autism diagnosis to be a runner. We grade that, but once they get onto the waiting list, we do a phone assessment, and after that we do an assessment in the family home with all the family and we bring the dog along to that so we can assess the family's needs. Not everybody gets through the whole process but-----