Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Last Friday, hundreds of parents of children with disabilities protested outside the Dáil. There were also protests in Cork and Enniscorthy. These were organised by Families Unite for Services and Support, FUSS. The hashtag used was #LetsMakeAFuss. The speeches we heard were extremely powerful. We are talking about parents forced to make a fuss and to struggle to get, or to try to get, what their children deserve as a basic right and need. They really should not have to have protests, to take court cases against the State and to try to pressurise for just their basic rights. These parents, however, feel they have no choice because their children are being utterly failed by the State in respect of the extremely long waiting lists, inadequate supports and absence of support in our schools.

I raise the particular issue, that in all of Tallaght there is only one secondary school with an autism class. Thankfully, there are now many primary schools with autism classes, but we are getting to a point where students will graduate from primary school and want to be going on to secondary school, but where there is only one such secondary school. Surely that does not make any sense and we need to expand the number of schools with autism classes.

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