Mr. Niall Brunell:

Yes. A couple of points were raised, but I will confine my comments to the issues arising in this Bill.

Reference was made to the rights of autistic people and to the text of section 3 of the Bill. When speaking about rights not being vindicated or existing, there is a consideration for the committee and, ultimately, the Government in assessing its own position on any legislation around what exactly those rights are that are being referenced and to what extent they are or are not being realised or vindicated. I am not saying this from the perspective of making statements about whether there are deficiencies in services. I am saying it from the perspective of looking at autistic people as an individual cohort of disabled people. In advancing a Bill like this, serious consideration would need to be given to whether the appropriate course of action that the committee or Government takes is to say that it is taking a particular cohort of disabled people and giving them rights and entitlements over and above those enjoyed by other people with disabilities. The legal risk that I mentioned arises precisely because of that. It is an equality-based legal risk. When taking one cohort of people with a condition that, if not properly evidenced, could be regarded by the legal system as arbitrary or unreasonable or fall foul of the Equal Status Act or constitutional provisions around equality, what exactly is the legal basis for saying that this particular cohort deserves singling out for rights and entitlements not otherwise enjoyed by other people disabilities? For example, if we are talking about autistic people’s right to access, are they in a materially worse position than other people with disabilities? If not, is it an autistic rights issue or a disability rights issue? If the latter, is an autism Bill the proper vehicle to try to tackle those challenges or should we be looking at something else? This is where I am coming from when speaking about legal risk and exposure.

Regarding section 3, I agree with what has been said. Setting out something this prescriptive in legislation is potentially problematic. When one lists anything in legislation, one risks locking out people who are not on the list. At a technical level, if we were to add a regulation-making power for the Minister to add to that list, there do not appear to be sufficient principles and policies in this section of the Bill. We would have a technical concern about that. From a departmental perspective, we would need to engage with legal advisers on it.

Regarding rights issues and the general ethos of legislating on the basis of autism, there is a question that the Government and this committee would have to consider in due course. I am not making a value statement on the matter – I am just putting on record the issues to be considered. There is a question about whether legislating for a particular strategy makes sense. It is not for me to fall on one side or the other of this question, but in terms of the issues that arise, I will revert to a comment that was made. If we are speaking about structural or infrastructural deficiencies, there is a risk that, if we insert legislative entitlements that effectively cannot be met, we will set a person, centre or service up to fail. I will provide an analogy from a technical and legal point of view. If the State were to legislate and oblige a private individual to do something when the State knew it was not reasonable to expect him or her to do it within the timeframe in question, it would almost certainly be open to challenge. It is not about being defensive in that sense. Rather, it is about looking at this from an objective perspective. These are the kinds of issue that the Bill engages, which is why I am raising them.