Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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460. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will publish an integrated, interdepartmental strategy on autism to provide for the compilation of accurate data on the prevalence of autism in Ireland, and for the introduction of a best practice model of service delivery, assessment, diagnosis and intervention for persons with autism who interact with Departments and public bodies; if such a strategy will contain a reporting mechanism for Ministers and public bodies; and if he will provide a timeline for the publication of such a strategy. [36217/22]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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461. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will issue guidance to public bodies on the provision of specialist autism training and awareness training for relevant staff. [36219/22]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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462. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he intends to establish an autism awareness campaign, including an information website and a traditional and online media strategy. [36220/22]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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463. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he intends to introduce legislation to require public service providers to set up data collection systems to identify and record the number of persons within their client bases who have autism and to calculate current and future needs for services. [36226/22]

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 460 to 463, inclusive, together.

Providing improved supports for persons with autism and responding to the particular challenges and barriers that they face is a key priority of mine as Minister of State for Disability, and I will consider the matters raised by the Deputy in the preparation of the Autism Innovation Strategy.

I note that the matters raised are elements of the Private Members Bill titled “The Autism Bill 2022” which the Labour Party put forward recently. Both Minister Roderic O’Gorman T.D. and I had the opportunity to set out the position of Government during the debate on 29 June.

Action on autism is an existing commitment in the Programme for Government, and I am leading on work to establish a national Autism Innovation Strategy. Government is committed to providing targeted and bespoke supports for neurodiverse people, which sit harmoniously in the wider context of disability policy and action. This requires a whole-of-government approach.

However, it is the Government’s view that legislation is not the most appropriate vehicle for achieving the objectives of the Bill, given the work already underway to advance national action on autism.

The development of a national strategy on autism is something that my Department has already taken steps to deliver. A budgetary allocation of €100,000 was secured under Budget 2022 for the purposes of designing and raising awareness of such a strategy, and on 29 April 2022, to mark Autism Awareness Month, I launched a comprehensive public consultation to inform the design of the Autism Innovation Strategy. The strategy development process is ongoing.

I am very conscious of Ireland’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Therefore, it is critical that the Autism Innovation Strategy be co-designed and informed by the lived experiences of people with autism, their families and their representatives.

The Autism Innovation Strategy will have as its immediate focus the delivery of real and tangible solutions to the challenges, needs and experiences of people with autism and neurodiversity. It will be a flexible, agile strategy that will be capable of evolving in line with best practice and the wider policy context. The Strategy is anticipated to influence the establishment of a best practice model of service delivery, assessment, diagnosis and intervention for persons with autism.

Given that the consultation process to inform the design of the strategy is ongoing, pre-designating specific elements or ambitions, such as data collection systems or training rollout, would not be appropriate at this time. Nevertheless, I anticipate that actions on data collection and training will be included within it.

A draft Autism Innovation Strategy will be published as soon as possible following consideration of all consultation responses. This will be followed by a second consultation after which the final Autism Innovation Strategy will be presented to Government for adoption.