Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank our guests for their submissions and for the discussion that has followed. My sole problem with this session is that I could spend my allotted time drilling down on each of the submissions rather than trying to cover all three. There was a huge volume of material in the submissions alone and much more has emerged in the discussions since the meeting began.

Dr. Conaty spoke about the idea of long-termism and short-termism and Dr. McAuley asked what the good looks like. Dr. Conaty spoke about it in the context of universal design but I think it applies also to these autism services. I do not have a clear conception of what the State thinks they should look like 20 years from now. I always get the impression, although not exclusively in this area given it is in many policy areas, that we are always making course corrections on a ship but we are not sure where the ship is supposed to be going. If we had a clear idea of the charted course, perhaps we would be more effective. If we did the work of determining what the good looks like, that might help us get somewhere a bit more effectively.

I will not dwell on the review of the Disability Act because Deputy Tully, in particular, drilled into that in her questions, but the recommendations in this unmet needs report are as clear as day and are substantial. I will leave it at that because there are other issues I want to have a look at.

I was going to ask about structuring the feedback from under-18s but Deputy Flaherty covered that in some detail. I know from being in the classroom that structuring the feedback of anyone under the age of 18 can be challenging in and of itself, without adding any further challenges.

It is more than a worthwhile exercise; it is essential and a central exercise.

I wish to leave Dr. Muldoon an opportunity to speak on some matters. We and Senator Flynn have talked a good bit about intersectionality in terms of, let us say, autism and membership of minority communities. We have talked a little bit as well about the overlap between autism and mental health difficulties. I want to give Dr. Muldoon the space and opportunity to talk about that children's disability network team, CDNT, structure. It has been well discussed and well rehearsed at this committee. There have certainly been problems with the roll out, how it is working and how parents are getting to interact with it, which he might have a perspective on. I know the difficulty around recruiting. There is a huge issue around autistic people with mental health difficulties accessing CAMHS, which was mentioned here multiple times as well. It is very important.

I am not sure who raised this idea of annual reporting on the progress of the CRPD. Somebody might explain to me where the power would lie in that, what it would look like and how it would be a useful lever.

Ms Gibney’s strategy statement submission sets out a specific goal to promote CRPD-compliant legislation reform. She said it is a huge challenge to the legislators who sit in this room. I want to give her an opportunity to unpack that and tell me what that would look like in practice. Are there exemplars she could point me to whereby that kind of lens is being brought into the legislative process in an effective way?