Phil Prendergast (Labour)

The parents and school teachers who have talked to me and to the Members opposite have not made it up. I know of a child of 14 years of age who escaped the system and has now been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, he is self-harming and expressing a wish that he was dead. There are no facilities in place for him. I have sat in the kitchens of parents of children with autism and heard of how their resources and health care hours have been cut.

At the end of this debate and at the end of the school day and school year, parents will have to cope with the worsening financial situation, bad news, more bad news and worse news. Despite that, there is a great deal of self-congratulatory claptrap. In saying that, I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State or to his office. I have the highest regard for him as the former chairman of the Committee on Health and Children and he is trying to do his job. However, there must be a disconnection when I hear what people say to me on the doorstep or in the kitchen when I visit these people who cannot come to my clinic because they have a disabled child, a child with an educational deficit or some other concern with which they have to deal. When I go to their houses, a wheelchair may have to be pushed out of the way and those people cope because they simply have to. The budget has made things considerably worse for them.

People now have time to digest what is in the small print of the budget and we are all still digesting that. I am dependent on other people because, as a midwife, I am not an expert on education, but I am a mother and I know what my children needed. When additional resources were needed in my children's school, we were in a position to get them. That was in the lucky decade when everything was fantastic.

We have to face reality and we are not in denial about that. Senator Joe O'Toole mentioned that he could issue the Minister with a cost effective and cost neutral means of obtaining the funding required without it impacting on the disadvantaged, the disabled, the needy and the tormented. The parents and siblings of disabled people will now have to find additional resources and suffer additional torment because they will have to get somebody or something to fill the abyss.

With respect to Senator Mary White, I am also a member of the sub-committee on suicide. I have heard the word "suicide" mentioned many times and so inappropriately because people are that desperate. What does one say to a parent of a child who says her son is expressing a wish that he were dead? As a mother and a nurse there are not words that can capture what that means?

It is frightening the way people are reacting to different aspects of the budget. The approach to it can be fragmented. Having heard the Minister of State's speech, it is wonderful that such facilities are in place, but the people who have made representations to me are not able to avail of them. If one is not a certain age or, as stated in the advertisement, one needs seven wise virgins and the blood of a unicorn's horn or whatever, one cannot qualify for something. That is frustrating when one is talking to people who have an identified need. I have not met the breed of people who have sought something to which they were not entitled and who have tried to pull a fast one, and I am long enough in politics not to be taken for a fool.

We need to look back. The failure to implement the EPSEN Act has had huge ramifications for people. The effect of the increase in class sizes was already identified. The issue has become a cliché and people are fatigued about it because there is such an overuse of the terminology. If my child were in a school and his abilities were not what they should be, I would regard it as the role of the teacher to ensure his needs were met, and that is not to demean the role of the teacher.

I ask that this motion be supported. I thank the Minister of State for listening and I thank the Senators, including Senator Mary White, for their support.