Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and our guests, some of whom I have known and met in my role as Chairperson of the Joint Committee on Autism. I commend the Bill and support it. Unfortunately, I must have missed the correspondence and did not get the opportunity to sign it or I would have done so months ago. When it came before the House a number of Government Members supported it to allow the Committee Stage debate today.

It is important to put on record the work the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has done in the area. I know from my work on the joint committee the advances that have been made.In recent weeks, we have seen the roll-out of assisted technology devices. We have seen a pilot model for the one-stop shops with regard to the community services' base and working with AsIAm in communities. That is something that I support and I look forward to seeing in the coming years that we have that all around the country. It is a model that we witnessed in Scotland and it works. The Minister of State travelled, after we as a committee travelled there, to see the best practice that we can take from there. We saw where a lot of things are working. I wish to put on record my thanks for the support that she has given and the work that she is doing in this area.

One of the recommendations of the joint committee was to review the 2005 Disability Act. For the life of me, I do not understand why we did not do it in conjunction with the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004. A complete review of the Act is something we need to do. That is badly needed. It is important for us as public representatives. We represent every child, teenager or young adult, or anyone with a disability and it is important that every child gets the opportunity to reach his or her potential. That is what this is about, namely, giving everyone the opportunity.

I know from personal experience, as I have a young autistic son, what is like not being able to get certain services and having to go private. We still go private to get those services to give him the opportunity of being the best he can be and to give him the same chance. That is something that I am more than willing to do but there are families who are not able to do that and we have to give everyone that opportunity. Early intervention is the best way of doing that but we must have proper assessments in place for people to identify what the need is and then have the backup therapist to be able to provide that support. That is another issue and a fear that I have that we will guarantee this service while we do not have the professionals in place to actually provide it. Currently there are 800 vacancies within CDNTs across the country in the various therapies, be that occupational therapy or speech and language therapy, and we need to get those positions filled first to be able to provide the support.

An Taoiseach, in his former role as Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, worked in the past twelve months with the various third level colleges and even the colleges in Northern Ireland to provide extra courses to provide extra professionals, but we have to go further. We have to try to bring back some of those young professionals who qualified here and have gone abroad to fulfil the roles in the various CDNTs so that we can provide those supports that are badly needed for our children.

I am invested in this personally. It is something that I am committed to. As a public representative, one of my main priorities is the autism innovation strategy which hopefully will be in place within the next number of weeks. I wish to commend the Minister of State on the work that she has done in this regard. It is something that should have been done years ago. We are behind a lot of other countries in Europe in that regard but the Minister of State took this issue by the neck and drove and pushed it on to ensure that it was delivered. This is something that I ask her to do with this Bill. We need to give certainty and support to every child and give every child the best opportunity in life to reach his or her potential.

I support Senator Clonan's Bill and I look forward to continuing to do so until this becomes law.