Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will share some of my own thoughts and come to the Bill at the end. I was struck by something Deputy Ó Ríordáin said, which was that we all have a shared responsibility here. We do have a collective responsibility - public representatives, the HSE or whatever State agency you want to name. We all sit in very similar committee meetings and get similar briefings from constituents and agencies and there is one consistent thread, which is that the State has fundamentally failed people with disabilities, including people with autism. This needs to be stated from the outset.

While I do not know the particulars of the Minister of State's interaction with the four schools in question because I have only been following it online, I believe certain schools need to be called out. I will point to Cork because I know it best. I look at schools in Deputy Ó Laoghaire's constituency. I think of towns like Ballincollig with 30,000 people and one ASD class. Meanwhile five miles up the road in Dripsey, there are three ASD classes for a school population of 150. Ballincollig has a school population of 1,300. There are occasions to call it out. There are three ASD classes in the school where I taught in Fermoy and a fourth one is under consideration. Two other secondary schools in the town have no ASD class and there is no intention of opening one. I do not know the particulars of the Minister of State's case or the case in that particular area in Dublin but I do know that the ratios of ASD classes to students in Dublin is appalling and embarrassing and, therefore, I believe that on occasion, we need to speak the truth and share that responsibility.

I am encouraged by the words of the chief executive officer of the NCSE, John Kearney, yesterday when he met members of the Joint Committee on Autism. He is new to the job but he looks like he is taking the right approach. He is going around and meeting public representatives and I believe he has met the Minister. I have met Mr. Kearney. I know the NCSE is supportive of the emergency legislation the Government is proposing this week. I agree with the Minister that we should not have to introduce legislation at the eleventh hour but this is the situation in which we find ourselves. God knows, I am blue in the face from calling for this legislation for the past 18 months. While it is very late in the day to be looking at it, better late than never. I believe we can streamline that section 37A process. It is not fit for purpose. Any bureaucratic situation that requires 18 months for somebody to dictate to a school that it must or should open an ASD class is not fit for purpose so I welcome Government action on that.

I welcome the fact that we are allowing this Bill to proceed and are having a debate on it. This is to be encouraged. The one thing I am concerned about is possibly creating a hierarchy of needs within disability. Hopefully, this can be teased out in the debate to come.

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