Ms Geraldine Moran:

I will start and then Dr. O'Leary can fill in. I thank Senator McGreehan, who was noted as being quoted when we went back and did this research. I have the statement here where Senator McGreehan state that while some things were working, some were not. There is an acknowledgement that some people are getting services while more people are not and that is the challenge. She asked what is next for the HSE and whether we have any faith in the HSE. Yes, of course we have faith in the HSE. There are lots of things that have gone right about this. We certainly would not want the take-home message from today to be that the HSE has done an awful job and that the situation is desperate. There are lots of things that are working. We need, as Senator McGreehan said, to acknowledge what is working and to build on what is not working. We have just completed the research and the invitation came very swiftly to attend today, so we have submitted the research for peer review as part of our next stage. This will be submitted to the HSE and other bodies like the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists, IASLT, which has put a lot of interest and work into this. We also will circulate the research to the Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland, AOTI, the professional body for occupational therapists and so on. We mentioned the roadmap. We are hoping that those recommendations will be undertaken and considered to improve things. There are many positives.

On the Senator's query about the assessment of need, we have our own ideas around that.. As clinicians, we prefer to get on with the job. For some parents and families and individuals, getting that piece of paper with a diagnosis of autism and outline of needs is gold to them. It explains who they are and what their needs are. Everybody has needs and we acknowledge that. From a therapeutic point of view, we would like to see staff and clinicians being able to get the services out there, to make improvements and not have to spend hours of time in diagnostic assessments, but there is a need for both. I remember as part of the training I had undertaken when we were preparing for the roll-out of disability services, we looked at a case where the mother of a child had said that her husband worked long hours and that she would like to be able to take her child to do the groceries, which is a simple thing. She asked what a multidisciplinary team, MDT, could do to support her so that she could take her child out of the home, to reduce anxiety around shopping. There were a number of strategies that the occupational therapist was able to do in order to assess how the sensory overload could be reduced for that child while they were shopping, as well as how a speech and language therapist could support the child in understanding doing groceries. This consisted of what their role was in the shopping, for example, taking down the cornflakes and doing different bits and pieces so that at the end of it, rather than the child having a meltdown as they were going outside the door, they understood. There is great satisfaction in being able to deliver these services and to be able to make life better for people. That is what every clinician who is working on a children's disability network team, CDNT, is passionate about and it is wonderful. There are many success stories and we just need to be able to deliver more. The only way we can deliver that is by having those extra staff on the ground, by looking at those areas that are working and by ensuring that the research is behind what we are doing.