Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Dooley for raising this very tough issue and I note his interest in it. I will take this matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney. I wish to emphasise the Government's commitment to providing a high quality service to all people with a disability. This commitment is illustrated by the substantial investment we have been making in disability services over recent years.

Very significant additional resources have been provided for services and supports in this area. The multi-annual investment programme, which is a key component of the Government's disability strategy, had by the end of 2008 provided for approximately 980 new residential places, 313 new respite places, and 2,505 new day places for the intellectual disability service. There were 300 new residential places and 950,000 extra home care and personal assistance hours for people with physical and sensory disabilities.

In the period 2006 to 2008, more than €500 million has been allocated to the Health Service Executive under the multi-annual investment programme, of which €425 million was for disability services and €125 million for mental health. The Government has further emphasised this pledge to people with disabilities by allocating additional funding to the continued development and enhancement of services in 2009. In the 2009 budget, an additional €10 million was allocated to the HSE for services in the area of disability and mental health. The funding for 2009 will provide for 125 additional therapy posts in the disability and mental health services area, targeted at children of schoolgoing age. In addition, once-off funding of €1.75 million is being provided for suicide prevention initiatives and mental health projects supporting service users and carers.

With regard to the matter raised by the Deputy, the HSE states that up to the middle of 2008, the waiting times for children receiving psychology services increased owing to the fact that there were major difficulties in recruiting psychologists because of a shortage of qualified candidates for the position. This relative scarcity also presented challenges to the HSE in retaining psychologists to provide services. Both of these factors contributed to an increase in waiting lists.

The HSE states that the current position on the provision of psychology services to children with suspected autism in Clare is that there is a full complement of psychologists working within the Clare children's services since November 2008. Work has been commenced by the HSE on reviewing children who were assessed, diagnosed and put on a waiting list for psychology services. The HSE states that this review will take approximately four to five months to finalise. This review does not impinge on the level of existing services being provided in the area.

The HSE also states that a new development in the provision of services to children with suspected autism is the establishment of a revised assessment and diagnostic procedure which is in line with best practice. All new referrals of children with suspected autism are covered by this process. The assessment process for the diagnosis of autism is complex and can take up to one week per child.

The HSE states that notwithstanding the introduction of these quality improvements and the associated increase in workload, it expects that, on the assumption that staff can be retained, waiting times will reduce from the present average of one year. The HSE states that while approximately a third of referrals are children with suspected autism, the other two thirds are non-autistic children with very complex needs. The HSE maintains that these non-autistic children are also in need of appropriate services and this impacts on the quantum of service available at any given time for autistic children.

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