Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Ward.

AsIAm has published a report, entitled Every Child Counts. It was only sent to me yesterday and I do not know if the Minister of State has had chance to see it. It contains the results of a survey, which it is keen to indicate is just a snapshot of autism services and supports. It surveyed the parents of children with autism. The key findings were that two thirds of parents and guardians surveyed have had to wait two years or more to receive an autism diagnosis for their child. Over 50% felt very dissatisfied with the HSE support services for their autistic children. Almost four in five said they were not in receipt of any support from either the early intervention or school age teams.

The survey was carried out over the past 15 months and therefore incorporates the Covid pandemic period. The results are alarming and it is important for the Dáil to consider progressing an autism strategy and establishing an autism committee. It is extremely important as the number of children with autism seems to be increasing all the time and the supports to deal with it are not available.

The report also referred to respite. Respite provision was poor prior to the pandemic and has been non-existent during it. Respite provision needs to resume and it needs to be provided in every county. It needs to be provided for children and adults, separately but simultaneously. Some €5 million was provided in the budget to open nine additional respite houses over the course of the year. I know one was opened in Limerick which is welcome. I am not sure of the status of the others. Will they be opened this year? It is essential that they are.

Separate emergency respite provision is required which will not interrupt the pre-booked respite provision being made available to families. Many families tell me that they have their child booked into respite care, have booked a couple of nights away and then they get a phone call the following day asking them to take their child out of respite and their break is interrupted. That cannot be allowed to happen; it is not fair to families. Respite needs to be person centred and it needs to be provided and designed with the interests of the child or individual at heart.

As the Minister of State mentioned, children have missed out on a considerable amount of school contact time between last year and this year. Children with additional needs have been impacted more greatly than others, resulting in regression in many cases. I welcome all the programmes that the Minister of State indicated have been offered. The enhanced summer provision programme that has been put in place is very welcome. However, parents have been telling me of difficulty with provision in some schools and that they are very disappointed that their local school may not be providing the service because of insufficient staff. Has this issue been dealt with? If the staff in the school are not willing to provide the service, can staff from another school do so or can undergraduate staff be brought in to provide the service?

The set allocation has not been reviewed for the past two years because of the Covid pandemic. While this does not affect some schools and might, in fact, benefit others, new schools or progressing schools are missing out. They have appealed and I ask the Minister of State to look at those appeals and ensure that extra provision is put in place in those schools prior to autumn resumption of school.

Day services for people with disabilities and people with dementia were severely interrupted last year. I previously welcomed the fact that day services for people with disabilities reopened in September and stayed open during subsequent lockdowns, obviously not at full capacity. I hope they will resume at full capacity very soon given that by now most of the service users and staff will have been vaccinated. Dementia sufferers have not been able to access their services and it is extremely important that they are reopened if staff are fully vaccinated. As I presume most of the older cohort of the population are vaccinated, it should be safe to do so.

The Indecon report on the disability capacity review has not yet been published. It is imperative to get that report to allow us to plan and know where and how to fund disability services for the future. When will that report be published? Will it be published in time for the budget preparation? The Oireachtas disability group and the IWA have called for that to happen. We have a deficit in disability services that needs to be addressed.

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