Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I am not used to being first in. I thank Ms Clinton and Ms Tonge. They laid out to some degree, with regard to the framework of where we are, the absolute necessity of providing people with that throughput from education to employment. We have all seen the benefits that accrue for the person, for society, for the wider economy and obviously for their family as well. It is about being able to be all they can be. I think there would be general agreement on that.

I would like to deal with a number of things. Universal design for public buildings should be done anywhere it can be done. The Cathaoirleach spoke about Leinster House and the attempts to do it here. Even on the St. Patrick's Day committee I was involved in, one of the members made sure of something very obvious in relation to general accessibility. We put in a wheelchair viewing area, which is something that could have been done years ago. There was also a quiet parade area and people spoke about doing that across the board. Like everything, when you do it, it is obvious. There is not a huge cost or anything to dealing with it.

We have spoken here previously about universal design. Universal design also relates to wider society. It is about reasonable accommodations, whether with regard to courses, particularly in third level, or the wider piece of work that needs to be done on a framework to create workspaces that are autism-friendly, for want of a better scenario. We are generally talking about adult services. There are difficulties as regards services for children, from assessments to therapies, but after that they are almost non-existent and fall off a cliff edge. If we were talking to further education institutes or colleges, we would be talking about their difficulties around not having enough personal assistants to help people and the work conditions there, which are almost from a century ago.

Again, that is an issue that needs to be resolved. It is a question of how we put those pieces in place. Ms Tonge talked about diagnostics for adults and support for people who find themselves in that position. What do we need to see in the transitional sense of bringing people into third level, and beyond that into employment? I was interested to hear her talk about the psychological backup that is required for people, particularly for those who are diagnosed late. We could do to death the talk on the lack of diagnostic services, the lack of assessment, or the lack of speech and language therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists and any term we could possibly think of. On the medical school issue, we need to have a real conversation with those people on what we can offer in the short term and then ensure we have the workforce planning fixes to ensure that is all in place. I ask Ms Tonge to comment on that, after which I will have a secondary question.