This morning, my Labour Party colleagues and I met with Cara Darmody and her father, Mark, from Ardfinnan in County Tipperary. Cara is only 12 years old but she has already become an impressive and powerful advocate on behalf of children with autism, autistic children, who are being denied services in this country. She has spoken out on behalf on her family about their struggle to get adequate services for her brothers Neil and John, in particular Neil, who is now ten and a half. She was the youngest witness to give evidence before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Autism last November. The Minister of State at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy Rabbitte, is well aware of her circumstances and the Taoiseach has also been made aware of them. What Cara and her family want us as legislators to do is to address the situation for families of children with autism, or autistic children, throughout the country. This includes the issues that have arisen in respect of difficulties getting diagnoses, difficulties with accountability in the HSE and, crucially, a review of the carer's allowance to ensure that it is fit for purpose for the many parents who are caring 24-7 for children with profound needs.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I compliment Cara on her strong performance and for being the fantastic advocate she is.

Hear, hear.

Cara raised some vital points in my meetings with her. One issue I have taken totally and completely on board, on which I was assisted by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael McGrath, was the allocation of €11.5 million to address assessment of needs. We are in the final days of producing our progressing disability services, PDS, roadmap, in addition to putting a plan in place where we will not just see assessment of needs done on an ad hoc basis between the 91 PDS teams. We will put regional assessment teams in place so there is a structure and plan. There will then be an outflow, whether it is back into education or the disability PDS teams. There is a plan and pathway. Perhaps the Minister for Social Protection will answer the other pieces.