Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important issue. The State has ratified the UNCRPD and the Government now has a strategy. I welcome all of that but let us see how we are doing on it. The diagnosis of autism has increased. That is obviously because there are more diagnoses being done. That is good, but it is too slow. There is a 16-month waiting list for a lot of families. That is simply too long and must be improved. The convention asked that we promote and protect people with disabilities, so they have equal rights such as inclusive learning. I will address the issue of children with autism or other special needs, who need access to a children's disability network team. There is a chronic shortage of staff on those teams in County Laois. What is happening is that the assessments are either delayed and the therapies are further delayed or are not available at all.

Some progress has been made in the area of transport. At one time people did not have access on to a bus or anything like that. Progress has been made and I can see that when I use public transport. However, we have a lot more to do there, particularly in rural Ireland. I commend the work of the Irish Wheelchair Association, which has particularly highlighted this. When I was first elected as a councillor a number of decades ago, one thing I did was go around with the Margaret McRee who has since passed on to her eternal reward. She was in a wheelchair.

I was amazed to see the difficulties there were trying to navigate through towns, on footpaths and everything else. That must be improved. The fact people have to pre-book 24 hours in advance at minimum to get onto public transport needs to change. Is my time up?

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