Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)

I, too, want to be associated with the remarks to the Maltese ambassador.

Today, I am asking for statements on autism to be held. I ask for this due to misinformation in the past number of weeks. It is not wrong to want to understand autism. Research is good, curiosity is good, and we should always try to learn more about the human brain. However, where it goes wrong is when people pretend they have found a solution to autism, as if the problem is the person. That is not science. That is fear dressed up as fact and it is dangerous. The real issue here is not autism; it is the international leaders trying to win votes through falsehoods. This may seem trivial, but it will cost lives. Autism is not caused by the lack of vitamins or by any paracetamol. Out there, there are women who are silently making a pact with themselves to struggle through pregnancy, their pelvises expanding painfully inside them without pain relief. Another mother secretly decides to skip the MMR vaccine but not tell anyone. This will cost lives. I have no solution to the problem being created across the Atlantic but what I would urge is that Members of this House commit to sticking to facts and science rather than vague speculation on what might or might not be causing the autism crisis. Autism is not a crisis. The crisis is the lack of support. The crisis is the lack of respect and the crisis is the failure to listen to autistic people themselves. Last night, AsIAm, issued its second press release in recent days. It stated that such remarks are not grounded in credible, scientific evidence and risk promoting a deeply medicalised, stigmatising and ultimately harmful view of autistic people. Autism is not a disease to be cured. Neither Irish health advice nor international scientific evidence link autism to paracetamol. It has been definitively established that there is no link between autism and vaccination. There is no evidence of overdiagnosis in Ireland either. Staying silent and not speaking on it would be to condone what is going on. We need to have statements on this issue and it would be important to bring the Minister to the House for us to have a fair and open conversation, to reassure parents and the neurodiverse community that we are listening and we have their backs.