James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Deputy's comments. Many years ago I was involved in the setting up of the Beechpark service when I was a member of the then health board.

The service was based on the south side but was to serve the entire area I referred to, including Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow. I am not happy that we have unequal distribution of services and I have asked for this to be addressed. I have allocated €1 million per annum for three years to the area of autism and I await more complete reports on how that money is being spent and how it is impacting on the service. In all areas of patient care we need to focus not on inputs but outcomes and we need to measure outcomes. Having said that, if there is no therapist available to support special needs assistants then children will not receive the optimum care that they should receive.

Earlier Deputy Áodhan Ó Ríordáin referred to the review and I did not respond on that point. The review is not complete. However, we are the first Government to put in place at principal officer level an individual across the Departments with responsibility for health, education and children to deal with intellectual disability and autism. We have done the same thing to address childhood obesity as well. Certainly, I will come back to the Deputy. I believe this is a serious situation and one I will address aggressively with the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch. I believe she is as committed as I am to seeing the situation corrected. We are keen to see the type of flexibility applied to the moratorium on recruitment that will not prevent people taking up posts in this specific area because of its significant importance to the future of children.

See this speech in context