Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The Minister has mentioned AsIAm and the pilot programme. Adam Harris and another young person were before the committee last week and they referenced the delay in accessing devices for children who need them and that their organisation would be rolling out a pilot programme. That is fantastic. The organisation does fantastic work. I also commend CAPS in my area for the fantastic work it does. A point made to me by a person in CAPS is the HSE is frequently referring children to it for supports and services, yet the group gets absolutely no support. That is unfair because it is a charitable organisation and requires support.

On devices and speedy access to them, there needs to be better joined-up thinking between the schools and the Department of Education and the Department of disability. We were talking about putting therapists back into special schools, but we need to roll out more therapists into other schools, because otherwise we are going to have parents sending children to special schools because there is access to therapists there when they might have been fine in a mainstream school if they had been getting the supports there. The devices are going to be required both at home and in school, so there needs to be a much better connection between the two.

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