Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has provided a little clarification. When I was first elected to the Dáil at the end of 1992, I was invited to visit a centre in my constituency which had many children with different levels of intellectual disability who ranged in age from young primary school children to children aged approximately 14 years. In those days many children with intellectual disabilities were grouped together and, as the Minister may recall, experts vigorously disagreed on whether, apart from full-blown cases of the condition, autism was a real diagnosis.

The Minister must be exceptionally careful when it comes to behavioural disorders. All children go through phases of development, strength, growth and difficulty. Where parents experience consistent difficulties with a child, despite their best efforts and good advice from family and friends, it is understandable they may seek a degree of expert advice on how best to influence their child's development and growth in a positive way. We should not lose sight of this.

Dealing with these conditions in school is also a developmental issue. I outlined an experience I had had in 1992, when there was little opportunity to get a proper diagnosis for children on the autism spectrum. The position has obviously changed.

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