Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Autism

Autism Policy: Discussion (Resumed)

1:55 am

Photo of Ruairí Ó MurchúRuairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that, Chair. I was running late from a meeting on the previous occasion. In fairness, I was going to send a question through but it was dealt with. That is the nicest thing I will say about anyone during the whole of this week.

I will break this up into two areas - assessment and therapies. I will paraphrase or synopsise, and the panel may correct me if I am wrong in what they have said. The assessment of need takes approximately 37 hours. The HSE will state not everyone requires this but, as has been said previously, there will be financial ramifications for certain families. There will be schools that will want it done, etc. Therefore, there is not a family that does not want it done. We all know what the law states in relation to it. The preliminary team assessment, PTA, was entered into and it did not cut the mustard at all. The HSE or certain people within the HSE even here would say not everyone requires - take the law out of it - the 37 hours. What is required, because there was talk about diagnostic pathways and whatever else? I am just wondering what the perfect system of assessment should look like.

Beyond that, we are talking about therapies. We all know we will not have enough of any of the skillsets that those on the panel have in the near future. We all know there are foreign recruitment drives and there is robbing and stealing of capacity from the private sector. All that should be done, and the more, the merrier.

The likes of the Minister, Deputy Harris, have said that workforce planning is kicking in and that, let us say, in four or five years, we will have the capacity. I ask for an answer in relation to that. Even if that is the case, we are looking at four or five years where we do not have the capacity.

If we could deal with the issue of the assessments, then it probably falls into what some of the questions have been about as to whether we would be as well to have occupational therapy, OT, speech and language therapy, SLT, and psychological services in schools because that is where some of the need is.

The panel already dealt with some of the silo issues but I want to return to it. Many parents come to me to talk about autistic children with anxiety, and they try to get this dealt with. I am not sure that they particularly care where it is dealt with. I am not sure that they really want child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, but they get sent to CAMHS. CAMHS says the child is an autistic child and he or she does not fit the criteria for the service, and back the child goes. The others say that they cannot deal with this because it does not fall under their remit. I accept that may also be partly the result of services that are all under pressure but none of it is working. If we could start with that, and deal with it, it would seriously reduce the amount of work we will have to deal with.

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