Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael)
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We have a quorum. Apologies have been received from Senators Wall and Garvey. The Dáil Business Committee has agreed to the joint committee's request for a Dáil debate on its report on the summer programme. This will take place on Thursday, 2 February at 6.16 p.m. and will have a two-hour slot. We are waiting for details of our debate in the Seanad.

Today's business will involve two sessions. Session A will run from now until roughly 12.10 p.m., and we will meet with representatives from Science Foundation Ireland. We will then take a short break. Session B will run until 2 p.m., and we will meet with representatives from the Middletown Centre for Autism. At the request of the Working Group of Committee Cathaoirligh, we will endeavour to finish the meeting at 2 p.m. I propose that the following usual arrangements will apply. Our witnesses will make their statements for around five minutes, or three minutes each in the case of Dr. Lopez and Dr. Healy. We will then have questions and answers with members. Each member will have five minutes and members may speak more than once should we have sufficient time. We will work off the list of speakers which was circulated during our Teams meeting.

All those present in the committee room are asked to exercise personal responsibility to protect themselves and others from the risk of contracting Covid-19.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the place where Parliament has chosen to sit, namely, Leinster House, in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the parliamentary precincts will be asked to leave.

For the information of witnesses, I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Oireachtas as regards references they may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected, pursuant to the Constitution and statute, by absolute privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of that person or entity. Therefore, if witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

The first item on our agenda is our consideration of autism policy. I welcome our witnesses. From Science Foundation Ireland, we are joined by: Dr. Ciarán Seoighe, deputy director general; Dr. Lorna Lopez, associate professor at Maynooth University and principal investigator of the family genomics research group; and Dr. Olive Healy, associate professor in applied behavioural analysis in the school of psychology, Trinity College Dublin. The committee is interested to hear from Science Foundation Ireland about Creating our Future, a forum that asks members of the public to suggest topics for research that could benefit the country. A number of the submissions touch on areas that are relevant to the lives of autistic people such as health, social care, inclusion and more. This platform gave the opportunity to the public to make their voices heard and to participate in a forum that will hopefully lead to improvements in society. This is something that we as a committee hope to achieve with the report we will be publishing at the end of March.

Before we hear from Dr. Seoighe, I propose that we publish his opening statement on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed. I invite Dr. Seoighe to make his opening statement on behalf of Science Foundation Ireland. He will have five minutes and then Dr. Lopez and Dr. Healy will have three minutes each.