Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody who participated in this evening's debate. I do not think it was a debate. To be quite honest, I think we are all on the same page. That is very important.

When you have met one autistic person, you have met one autistic person. Let us understand the line. That is the baseline here. Perhaps every Department other than my own needs to understand that. When you have met one autistic person, you have met one autistic person.

Before I go on, I will acknowledge the work of Niall Brunell in the Department, who has worked really hard on the strategy with me. I also acknowledge the work of Noel Byrne. Their teams have done a great deal of work. They have worked with everybody and fed into the various reports. They have worked with AsIAm, with the various organisations and steering groups and with the people who participate in them.

I am not going to stick to the script because I want to address a few issues. I will start with the issue of AAC devices. While it is not for me to make announcements on the floor of the Dáil, I will say that is my ambition that AAC devices will become a permanent fixture and will not be a one-off.

I believe it was Deputy Martin Kenny who spoke about assessments of need. I have the regional assessments hubs set up in the six RHAs. I will have to talk to Bernard O'Regan about what Deputy Ó Murchú said. There has to be one front door and no wrong pathway. Expanding on the assessment hubs, we also need community information hubs. We need pathways that are not on a medical model or anything like that. The phrase "from the cradle to the grave" was used. Where do we access early years services? Where do we get education? What are the barriers? What are the questions we should ask teachers? What is going to be the transition from sixth class to first year?

How do we get through that really anxious period when ADHD presents when someone is getting ready for exams? How are we looking at integrating into higher education and further education? How do we actually work with our guidance counsellors to ensure we get the best opportunities for our young people? Parents need that support and they do not get such support with a good bedside manner within the HSE. They are there to deliver a particular style of service. We need community hubs in autism that will actually reflect the needs of the parent and the young people. It needs to be fit for purpose, accessible and universally designed for accommodating the young person who has autism. It is not so much just the young person; it can be the person who is transitioning into higher education or into employment because there can be those little speed bumps along the way when someone needs to come back again to be put on the right pathway.

It is way above my pay grade to have any sort of involvement in the school inclusion model but I absolutely believe it needs to happen. There is no denying that whatsoever. Sometimes when we ask why things do not happen, perhaps we need to talk about the unions. I will not go any further than that. We have fantastic teachers, special education teachers and SNAs but sometimes when we want to change the Titanic ever so slightly, we have to ask where are the barriers to change. Sometimes it has to be in relation to the unions. I will get shot for that later on. I cannot crack certain whips and that is the reality of it, but it is important to call out what they are. That is my job.

I met a fantastic group during the summer, as all of the Members also meet these groups. I met the young leadership group from AsIAm. That human leadership group taught me an awful lot in the one hour I was in the room with them. They taught me so much about how we need to actually listen to, understand the direction of, and hear the voices of young people. Maybe sometimes we do not have enough young people engaging with us. The AsIAm youth leadership programme is phenomenal. There needs to be more space for that in how we do policy and how we engage with younger people.

Reference was made to the autism strategy being updated every three years. I would love to see that happen and perhaps under my tenure, when we get the autism innovation strategy launched, that could be the next part of the conversation. I would like to think the work all of us have put in will not fall on deaf ears going forward, and that when governments change it continues to stay in play. It really has to. Members will be aware of the optional protocol and the release the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and I did earlier this week, along with the work that went to Cabinet. That is real. I really want to see the optional protocol enacted. The no wrong door approach is very important. As Deputy Ó Cathasaigh has said, sometimes parents feel there is actually no right door for them.

The summer programme is where we put families into a spin. We put families into crisis by not having summer programmes. "Not having the routine" is what I hear all the time, along with not having the stability of the structure. Coming to the second last week of August, before schools start to return, is when families are actually on their knees. We can prevent this and it is within our gift. To be fair to the HSE, I have seen some of the recommendations relating to the grant fund, although it is not finished out yet. As well as balancing it with not having enough therapists on our teams, it speaks to that point about routine. It is about that routine and ensuring that children have access to what they classify and like as their routine services.

A number years ago I visited a place called Liskinnett Farm, which is not too far from where Deputy Michael Moynihan comes from. They support 6,500 therapeutic interventions through equine therapy. These are children who go to the summer programme but actually go horse riding every day on the week they are on the summer programme. We need to be a little more agile in our approach to the summer programme. It does not need to be regimental within the classroom but the children need to get on the familiar bus to go to their familiar location to be supported with their familiar staff. That needs to happen but there is nothing to stop us bringing in our trainee occupational therapists and physios and nothing to stop us bringing in our trainee nurses or trainee teachers, or even our trainee gardaí. I again go back on this hobby horse of mine. We need everybody to understand autism and how to interact earlier in the season. We can bring these trainees into the school. Junior school does not finish up until the end of June and the colleges are out at the end of May. There is nothing stopping us. We can do the transition without putting the entire weight on the teaching body. We can lean on teaching support to work with our young professionals and our leaders of the future in education, our leaders of the future in health and social care, and our leaders of the future when it comes to crime prevention. We can use our mainstream and we can work with the children who need that support. It is not rocket science; it is about a change of culture and a willingness to participate. Let us be fair and acknowledge that this is happening in some schools. We need other schools to come on board. We need other Departments, including health, education, and equality, disability, integration and youth to all work together and stop being siloed. Meetings about meetings must stop. We need to actually say, "This is the pathway and this works". Maybe we need to give more autonomy back to the school principals. Maybe we need to give more autonomy back to the disability managers so they can work out their own local arrangements.

Deputy Troy raised the issue of ASD classes, where the response has been along the lines of, "You say you need two but we are only giving you one but actually we know that the prevalence of autism is growing." That approach does not make sense to me. He mentioned Mullingar. I can also talk about Castleknock in Dublin where there are 23 young children that I am aware of at this moment who are waiting to get into two national schools and there is no capacity for them. No young child should not know where he or she will go to school in September.

With regard to respite, I go back again to the point that it does not all have to be about a head on the pillow. We should consider alternative forms of respite, including Saturday clubs, weekend camps and Easter and summer camps. When funding is provided in a budget that ensures €15 million for respite care and €25 million in a full year, why we are doing every second weekend with a provider just blows my head completely. On day services where there are waiting lists, we know our school leavers because we are profiling. It was 1,700 one year and 1,800 another year, and nearly 2,000 this year. I have left aside €34 million in a full year for school leavers. It is beyond me why one cannot actually do the sums, make the provisions, map it out and have places sustained. I reiterate that I am in full support of an Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputy Durkan, and all Deputies. My job is to secure the funding to ensure these can be operationalised to make sure the lives of our young people, and our not so young, are in a better place. I cannot go out and do it but by securing the funding we are paying the wages to ensure that people do their jobs and are accountable.

See this speech in context