Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for returning for this resumed session of statements on autism. As Senator Daly said, it is good that today the attention of the House is virtually exclusively focused on special needs and people who have autism and how the parents of many children must cope with that. It is important that the Minister of State is present to hear these statements.

Some years ago in my constituency a large group of parents with problems not properly addressed by anyone in the Irish medical service, such as dyspraxia, attention deficit disorder and mild forms of autism, organised a major conference. We were invited to attend as public representatives. It was an amazing conference one Saturday in the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght which more than 1,000 people attended. The day was organised into modules led by various experts, many from the United States and elsewhere, describing various intellectual and mental disabilities suffered by children. It was astonishing to hear one parent after another identify cases presented by the experts with their children. People have a deep yearning and need for information on this issue.

One area where our health service falls down is in following up on young parents and their children. While vaccinations are administered at an early age very often the first formal interaction between the child and the State is in national primary education. One lesson we can learn from other models of medical service, particularly in the European Union, is the need for early intervention by the State to ensure that where difficulties emerge the parent is given this information. The conference revealed the parents' deep need to discover if their child's difficulty is part of a pattern and whether it can be identified and fits with some of the major diagnoses of mental or intellectual disability. Early intervention is crucial in this area, particularly between the ages of one and five, to see if the pattern is such that one can identify the particular problem a child presents.

Senator Daly made the interesting point that there is sometimes a failure on the part of voluntary groups to recognise that they receive funding from the State and various health boards in order to help parents, particularly those with autistic children. Many of these organisations stress that their funding is given on a year to year basis. One recommendation to emerge from the White Paper on volunteerism is to move to multi-annual budgeting. In other words, an organisation working in the Mid-Western Health Board Area would know its funding on a three-year basis rather than year to year. We must do that because many of the organisations helping parents through this difficult time need to know their budget with a degree of certainty over a few years. If the Minister of State could guarantee the financial status of these numerous organisations, they could fulfil their plans over time. Could the Minister of State address this with the various authorities to organise it on a more concrete basis?

Senator Ulick Burke said that the high incidence of autism is a cause of great concern. He said that one in 166 children presents with some form of autism. Senator Daly made the point that we need to commit funding to research the reasons for this. I am not aware of any other country in western Europe where the incidence of autism is as high as it is here. We must commit funding to that soon. The Tánaiste has committed substantial funding to research on the economy and has rightly said that the Government wants to concentrate on this. The Minister of State must commit greater resources to research in this area to see whether there are particular conditions here which have not been met to reduce that incidence.

The main bugbear for parents in my constituency, and this is reflected across the floor of the House, is that there is no single agency to which they can turn for help. If one has a child presenting with a form of autism there is no agency which will give the financial, moral or psychological help one needs. I hope the Minister of State will turn his attention to this. I do not propose a one-stop-shop, as some have suggested, in each county area. Several officers should be charged with co-ordinating a plan for the child, including the provision of finance for the child and its parents, ensuring intervention and contacting the parents to tell them the State cares about their dilemma. That is the most important issue brought to my attention as a public representative; people want a representative of the State to call and say it cares, and to co-ordinate the services. Every family in this position needs such a response. Respite is a serious issue for parents of a child with autism to enable them to get away for a week or a weekend to rest and take time off from their task of rearing the child, with all its attendant difficulties and challenges. One of the best initiatives of the Government in its last term was the introduction of a respite care grant through the then Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs. It was very beneficial to carers but unless there is a place where one can leave one's loved one with confidence that the person will be well cared for, parents often cannot get away for even a few days. Could the Minister of State ensure that officers at various health boards would be responsible for various parents and intervene earlier to help them?

One reason we are learning so much about the area of special needs and autism is that we are catching up. We have a great deal to learn from our EU partners as recent investment catches up on minimal investment over the preceding 20 or 30 years. Often in the past these problems were not recognised as educational difficulties. We are running to stand still in terms of our recognition of the issue here.

If, as Senator Ulick Burke stated, the fact that someone has a form of autism is recognised when they are at an early age, that child will have massive potential in terms of breaking through the educational difficulties to which I refer and the outlook for them in later life will be great. There are amazing stories about people with autism and other forms of disability. If we can intervene at an early stage, ensure that the correct resources are in place and draw up educational plans for such people, there will be opportunities for their lives to be transformed. We must get this extremely positive message across.

The major issue relating to many of the special needs within our education system is that of early assessment. As Senator Daly correctly pointed out and as the Minister of State is aware, there are not enough speech therapists or people involved in the area of ongoing psychological assessments. If we cannot produce them locally, we will have to enter the marketplace in Europe to recruit them.

Speech therapy courses are available at Trinity College. Has there been an increase in the total number of places on offer in the undergraduate courses at the college in recent years? We must double, treble or quadruple the number of places on offer there to ensure that there will be an adequate number of professional staff in place to deal with this matter in the future. We will, otherwise, be obliged to carry out a massive recruitment campaign in England, France and Germany to ensure that the assessments that are needed are actually carried out. I welcome this debate and I thank the Minister of State for his attendance.