Mr. Barry O'Donovan:

I want to go back to the question from Senator O'Sullivan about distance. One of the reasons we started up West Cork Down Syndrome Support Group was to bring the services closer to our children in west Cork. When we first started our journey with Jack, we were an hour and a half driving to Blackpool in Cork to get speech and language therapy for him. It was an hour and a half up, a 40-minute slot and an hour and a half home. I am a dairy farmer and my wife is a practice nurse. It was a full half-day out of our working life to take Jack to one service, to just one thing. I and another guy said we would try to do something about it. We started up the West Cork Down Syndrome Support Group and we started trying to get services ourselves. We were getting the services on a Saturday morning and on a Saturday evening for speech and language. Basically, however, we had to go back to the fundraising side again. We were providing the service to the families provided they helped out with fundraising, for example, through the Tour de Munster cycle and we do a cycle called the Mizen Looper. We provide the moneys to pay for those services and to try to get people who provide speech and language therapy to come from Cork city down to Skibbereen. It is impossible. One of the guys who is furthest out is Tim Murnane, who lives in Toormore with his wife, Anne. For them to come into Skibbereen takes 40 minutes and to drive from Skibbereen with their son Tadhg is another hour and 40 minutes again. They were spending three or four hours a day on the road to get a 40-minute service in Cork city. It was not worth it for us. That is why we set up this west Cork group.

To have services closer to home is what I would like to ask for here today.