Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

I come to the debate as someone who is involved in education and who has a family history of involvement with people with special needs. It is important that we highlight the fact that children with special educational needs have unique and individual requirements when it comes to education. Successive high court cases have not only vindicated the constitutional right of even the most severely and profoundly disabled to an education but have shown incontrovertibly, through the evidence presented, the benefit of education and the ability of people to respond and develop skills arising from that education.

I listened to the points made by Senator White and the Minister. Despite the availability of research from leading academics, the Department of Education and Science has been reluctant to initiate progress, instead forcing parents to the courts and only then, grudgingly, putting in place the supports required, albeit on a piecemeal basis. When the history of educational provision is written, the Departments of Education and Science and Health and Children will be indicted as having failed to meet the needs not only of children with autism but also of their families. This is very important.

Following the Sinnott judgment in 2001, a task force on autism was commissioned which produced a report that ran to several hundred pages and contained numerous scientifically based conclusions and recommendations. These recommendations were not based on a hunch or on what the members thought might work but on the best available international research and empirical findings. One of the key recommendations was early diagnosis and intervention. On these two points the system has clearly failed families. In my own county of Cork, which is representative of the rest of the country, there is a two and a half year waiting list for an assessment and diagnosis of autism. For a child of five or six, a two and a half year wait is the equivalent of half of his or her life. The task force argued that the projected number of NEPS-employed psychologists with expertise on autism was grossly inadequate. Since then, the Department has failed to increase the number of NEPS psychologists to the full projected number of 220, although it promised this would be achieved eight years ago. Today there are approximately 150 NEPS psychologists, even though the school population has increased significantly in the past number of years.

Families in this situation have told me that once the diagnosis is made, the next challenge is to find the appropriate services to try to remediate the condition.