Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I just left an all-party autism committee meeting to ask this question and made a bit of an entrance as I did so. The key question I have on this process is twofold. The first part relates to the sharing of information between various Departments and agencies as to the number of autistic people across the State so that we as a House, a Government, as a Legislature can appropriately apply budgets for the provision of those services across all Departments. We really do need to be able to set that out and I hope it will form part of the strategy; and if it does not, that it forms part of the outcome of that strategy.

If it does not, I might ask the Minister of State to comment on the capacity of Government as a whole to provide adequate services on the basis of knowing the numbers because data is just so important. Her colleague in the Department of Health talks about nothing without data and this is probably one of those occasions where that might be helpful in this Department.

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