Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What we are talking about here are rights for citizens and be able to deliver a service. We are literally talking about a cradle-to-grave care. We all accept that this has been lacking. We could all reiterate some of the points made about psychology services, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, and physiotherapy. We all know the waiting lists. Everyone has spoken about the 17,000 children waiting for initial contact with children's disability network teams. We all know this is not sustainable in the long term.

I welcome what has been said about dealing with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science regarding delivering workforce planning and the throughput that will fill these spaces but many have already spoken about the difficulties that exist regarding people who fall between services - when they may be engaged by the CDNT teams but need support from CAMHS. However, then it is a case of the child has a diagnosis of autism so CAMHS cannot deal with the case and vice versaand over and back. We have all come across these issues.

If we are talking about the ambit of disability services, it crosses too many Departments. We would nearly need every Minister in here. We have dealt with a number of issues relating to housing. Hopefully, I think we may have got across the line regarding some of them and got around some corners. We probably need a wider route map regarding how we can deliver. Many have spoken about the difficulties around adaptation grants. Even beyond that, there are people whose children face serious issues who may be able to avail of an adaptation grant but perhaps the house does not suit it. They cannot afford to move to a new house and are caught. Unfortunately, I will have more such cases to bring to the Minister of State in the near future. I dealt specifically with the issue of education in the Joint Committee on Autism. It could take about six hours to deal with the issues. We just need to deliver for people. It is as simple as that.

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