Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I support this motion and thank Sinn Féin for putting it forward. I have a vested personal interest as I have a son who is autistic. Everything I have heard tonight is familiar to me and we have had a typical experience. We have a lovely young boy, a twin, and Tommy was verbal so we did not really notice for the first few years. As time went on, we started to notice and we experienced everything I have heard about tonight. It took us three or four years to get a diagnosis and we had to go private in the end to get it. We had to take our son Tommy out of ordinary school as he would never cope independently that way.

We have been lucky since and it is not all bad. He is in a bloody good school in the Setanta school on the Stillorgan Road. It is a specialist school. We must celebrate sometimes when there are facilities. If we do not recognise them, people might think they do not matter and no budget will be provided for them. Let us celebrate what is good and what has been done. Much good has been done and things are a hell of a lot better than 20 or 30 years ago, when we had practically no autism services. I say that as a parent. I say this knowing all the failings and having seen all that is wrong.

I will share some of my experiences. Much good comes from parents working together in support groups, for example. One might learn more from other parents than from the system. The system does not facilitate communication. We only found out about the school my son attends through a group called Open Spectrum, where we share information. It is over coffee beside the running track or whatever that one finds out this information. The school is only two or three miles from the house and we never knew it existed. Another parent told us and we suggested it to the authorities, so he ended up there. Sometimes the parents working together come up with very good things.

I speak about my own area but this does not apply to my son because he will never be able to integrate into an ordinary second level school. There is a real and acute shortage of second level schools where autistic pupils are integrated. Dublin 6 is the worst area in the country for this because we are so bloody posh. The schools are so high in the league tables that they cannot afford to have a school with integrated autistic students. Those kids in those schools will not grow up with other kids with disabilities, so they miss out on that part of their education. They may end up with a kid with special needs, and if they have not seen it in school, how will they know about the good and difficulties coming with that? That must change and every school, including the posh ones in Dublin 6, should be integrated. Some kids with autism can integrate with others and it would benefit the whole school for them to be there.

There was a great court case taken to defend the rights of autistic children to an education, and the Department's response was that because of its limited resources, once a child turned 18, that would be the end of it. That is a bit of a pity as there is a real gap when people turn 18. Last but not least, sometimes we seem to be engaged in a process of getting rid of all institutional community settings. What has happened to Camphill in recent years breaks my heart as I see it as a brilliant institution. We were kind of hoping our Tommy might end up in Camphill, and it could have been a perfect alternative home. We should not disperse everybody into the community and we need some institutional group settings. Let us check the science and facts about putting everybody into the community. Some adults are not really able to cope in that way, so maybe we still need some institutional care centres. That is my lived experience.

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