Mr. Adam Harris:

On the opposition, I am not necessarily speaking to the autism innovation strategy but it is more about any effort that has been implemented over the past decade to try to get an autism strategy in place. We have been lucky to get the autism innovation strategy because we have had a significant commitment and push from the Minister of the day to get that. However, if you look back over recent years we had a Bill from the Labour Party in 2012, which was the first autism Bill. This was followed by former Senator James Reilly's Bill in the last Seanad, which was followed by a motion from Sinn Féin calling for an autism empowerment strategy and that passed unanimously in the Dáil. We have seen further efforts by the Rural Independent Group and the Labour Party since then. Every time this has come to the floor of a House of the Oireachtas it has had cross-party support and there has not been a single politician against it.

Yet, every time it actually comes to turning that political will into reality, it simply does not happen. That is concerning, because if there is a political consensus on something, based on the needs of the autism community, it should happen. If we want to understand the rationale for some of the opposition, I would probably look to two pieces. There can be a reluctance to take a disability-specific approach. However, we need to be very clear that we have a Disability Act and a national disability inclusion strategy, and lots of areas of public policy, we have broader strategies and we recognise the need to put specific lenses on issues. For example, we have Sláintecare, but there is still a national cancer strategy. We have an anti-racism strategy, but there are still specific strategies that focus on the Traveller and Roma communities. Sometimes there is a need to put a specific lens on a particular cohort of people, even perhaps for a period of time. The data that comes from the autism community and the fact that we are now looking at a community of people shows that there has been a shift. If we were having his discussion even last year, we would have been talking about 1.55% of the population; we are now talking about 3.38% of people, based on Department of Education data. There has been a significant shift in demographics. There has been a massive range of issues arising as a result of that. Quite simply, if the existing apparatus was working, we would not be asking for a specific strategy. We are asking for it because it clearly has not delivered for the scale of the challenges the community is facing. Closely linked to that, we would look at issues, for example, such as the reform of the EPSEN Act. It is really positive to see that review take place and to progress, but in the past there has been a sense that we do not need to implement legislation because we are doing it anyway. I think we know, in reality, that as long as we take a model that is grace and favour, people are left behind. Very often, it is those who face the greatest barriers. Too many of the supports for autistic people in Ireland are based on this charity model, instead of recognising that autistic people are rights holders. Those would probably be the two areas where we would see the most significant causes of opposition. That is why we think legislation is important.

On behaviour-based approaches, it is very clear that it is the overwhelming view of autistic adults who have experienced applied behaviour analysis, ABA, that it can be an extremely traumatising experience. There is also a recognition that the actual evidence base for ABA, for many autistic people, is extraordinarily questionable no matter what perspective one comes from. What I would say is that when we talk about the ABA industry, it is an incredibly well-funded industry. It is not surprising that as evidence moves on and the wishes of the community move on, there will be significant pushback. I would describe what we have seen to date as pushback. I do not see it as being particularly constructive. Taking the international ABA congress, which was held here last year, as an example, when the agenda includes a session which is basically about how to answer your critics, that shows me that we are really not talking about anything substantive. There is still a very paternalistic view within that sector that is problematic. What this fundamentally comes back to is the question of why we have therapies and why there are interventions for autism. The only sorts of supports we should be looking at for autistic people are ones that support an autistic person to be their best self in the community. Yes, it is important to gain an understanding into what other people think, but it is about enabling them to have the autonomy to make their own decisions and be fully involved in the community. It is very worrying that in our education and health systems, we still see overwhelmingly behaviour-based approaches. While there is much good in the recently published autism best practice guidelines from the Department of Education, we raised significant concerns prior to their publication that there is a whole pillar in them that is based around behaviour-based approaches. I am not sure that part of the reason for that is not that there is a tendency to want to give people who perhaps do not understand autism as well what they want, which is a way of addressing behaviour that they can see, as opposed to actually trying to give people who are working in our health and education systems a human rights-compliant understanding of what autism is.