Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I cannot give Deputy Ó Caoláin the exact date of completion. The original date was to be in the autumn of 2006 and those concerned are working towards that.

The Deputy is obviously familiar with the Middletown Centre for Autism. There are a number of key facilities to be provided in the centre. There is to be a residential learning support service, which means the whole issue must be dealt with and the centre must be capable of taking people on a residential basis. There will be an educational assessment service, a training and advisory service, which is enormously important, and an autism research and information service.

The centre must be physically constructed and prepared. Most important, the expert staff in this area must be recruited. It is estimated that the project will be completed in 18 months but I hope it will be sooner. The plan has already been approved. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, is enormously supportive of it and has been driving it forward. It will be up and running next year. Obviously, all the other areas that I mentioned are already ongoing.

This is an area in respect of which the budget has increased, in a small number of years, from zero euro to over €400 million. There was no funding initially because the area had not been identified as a special area. This funding is mainly expended on professional staff who are dedicated to trying to assist families, such as the one to which the Deputy referred, in dealing with the educational and health issues associated with autism. They are trying to deal with the considerable difficulties faced by these families.

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