Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Perhaps that question came from left field so Ms Hurley may not have all of the information in front of her. I, and perhaps other members, would certainly appreciate getting a full briefing note on that. I am not sure how I feel about the State contracting out services of this type, and employment supports in general. I am not speaking specifically about employability. It is essential, however, if we are contracting out services, to know what those key performance indicators are and whether we are directing people towards quality work. It can be a huge setback for somebody who is distant from the labour market to engage with services, find themselves placed in employment, and then find that the employment is not suitable. We can imagine that is the case, particularly in the case of autistic persons who engage with employment services, which is going to be a difficult first step for them in any case, and are then placed in an employment which is not appropriate or the supports are not appropriate. Double counting that person coming back out into an employment service is not what we want to do.

I have an answer on the inverse of my next question. Mr. Hession provided a figure for the number of people who have applied or qualified for disability allowance and who may be autistic. I was looking at the specific language around how someone qualifies for disability allowance and the bullet point states applicants must be substantially restricted because of their disability from doing work that would be suitable for a person of their age, experience and qualification. That is quite a wide criterion.

We are not talking about an injury or a disease here; we are talking about people who are neurodiverse. Does the Department have figures for the number of people who have an autism diagnosis and who are availing of disability allowance? It is the flip side of the question, that is, not how many people who get disability allowance are autistic but, rather, how many adults who have an autism diagnosis avail of disability allowance. I know that EmployAbility does not necessarily require the person to be in receipt of disability allowance, but I worry slightly that we have spoken in this debate mainly about people who are on disability allowance and that we are missing a large cohort of people who have autism and who may need employment supports but who may not qualify for disability allowance. I would like to know whether the Department has some sort of read on those figures. I absolutely understand that this is a difficult question in that, particularly for older people or adults, there has been a paucity of autism diagnoses historically, so Mr. Hession may or may not have figures in that regard.