There are four Deputies remaining. I will take them together. I ask for their co-operation. First is Deputy Andrews.

We will not get answers like that.

I can do nothing about that. I am facilitating Deputies because we are out of time. Perhaps those who took extra time might reflect on that.

That is not much good to us.

I would be perfectly within my rights to stop the whole thing,-----

I understand.

-----but I will instead take the four extra Deputies, with the Tánaiste’s co-operation.

Yesterday, the Garda Representative Association, GRA, made a decisive move in its ongoing dispute with the Garda Commissioner. Earlier this week, I extended an invitation to the GRA to come to Leinster House to give a cross-party briefing on the realities facing front-line gardaí and to ensure that their voices were heard. Community policing is vital in the inner city, but as a result of the new roster, it is being skinned to the bone. This is not acceptable. Front-line gardaí have told me that the number of community gardaí has been reduced by one third in preparation for the new roster. This will damage the Garda’s impact locally and set back years of hard work by community gardaí in the inner city. Will the Government intervene, stand up for front-line workers and protect community policing?

I will be brief. I wish to bring to the Tánaiste's attention an issue with the eligibility criteria used by Bus Éireann. I am dealing with a child who is attending her third-nearest school, or so Bus Éireann deems it. When I analysed how Bus Éireann calculated the route, I saw that it was strictly enforcing the term “the shortest traversable route”. To achieve that shortest traversable route and disqualify the child, Bus Éireann brought out a measuring wheel before I met it one week and walked 300 m through a housing estate to shave off a couple of hundred metres, thereby deeming the child ineligible. This is a fact - I met Bus Éireann on site. Is such a prescriptive interpretation by Bus Éireann in the spirit of the school transport system? The spirit of the system is to get children to school on a bus.

I wish to raise the issue of autism supports. The report of the Joint Committee on Autism made 109 recommendations. We all know the difficulties that parents face in terms of autism units and disability school transport. I am even hearing from crèches that they do not have the resources they need to provide support for a considerable number of the children with autism who are attending their facilities.

We know about the game of ping-pong between primary care and children’s disability network teams, not to even mention child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. We know that we do not have enough speech and language therapists, occupational therapists or psychologists. Even if we get recruitment correct and have all the budgetary pieces in place, we will not rectify that in the short term. What plans are there to get the best bang for our buck and to provide the best supports for children and their families? The various Ministers, their Departments and the HSE need to engage on this and deliver.

I thank the Deputy, but we are well over time. I call Deputy Martin Kenny.

I appreciate the opportunity. I wish to raise with the Tánaiste the issue of services for children with intellectual disabilities. I sent an email to community healthcare organisation, CHO, 1 on 28 July. I will read a part of it:

I am writing with regard to a family living in [Leitrim]. The daughter, Maggie ... (aged 10 years) has yesterday been discharged from CAMHS due to her condition being [considered an] Intellectual Disability. The Mother, Jennifer ... has been informed that there are no services locally for her to be referred to and [she] is not permitted to transfer to services in other areas or to access private services unless [she] can pay for it [herself]. The Mother [has] nowhere to access [private psychiatric services or to issue medication in those situations].

I received a brief acknowledgement of this email. I emailed again two months later but have heard nothing. I have rung the office of CHO 1’s chief executive several times about this issue. The situation is the same for many children across many parts of the country. There are four intellectual disability teams in the State, yet children who are in an area that does not have one are not allowed to transfer to any of them. I expect the reason is that the teams are overrun. The child in question had a tumour and went through two years of chemotherapy. This child needs help. Her parents are at their wits’ end, yet the HSE, which we as a State pay to provide these services, is not providing them. Something needs to be done urgently for this child and others in the same situation.

I thank the Deputies for raising these issues. Deputy Andrews referred to the GRA and the Garda situation. We support community policing and invest heavily in it, but the issues that remain outstanding in respect of the rosters should be resolved through the available industrial relations machinery. It is important that those avenues – the internal mechanisms and the established industrial relations mechanisms – be explored fully.

Deputy Pádraig O’Sullivan discussed school transport. What he described was not in the spirit of the school transport system. The spirit is to try to get access for children on buses and get them to school. The idea of using a measuring wheel to identify a route is not acceptable by any yardstick. We need a bit of common sense and to think about the child and the family with a view to sorting out this issue. I will speak to the Minister about this specific case and see where we can take it.

Deputy Ó Murchú mentioned the autism report. Without question, it is a matter of co-ordination and co-operation between all of the agencies. In my view, we need multidisciplinary teams in special schools. The HSE does not agree with me.

In schools.

In schools is where I would have them. The Progressing Disability Services, PDS, programme has a different view, but coming from an education background, that is what I believe. We had it ad hoc in the past before PDS and it worked in many areas. To be fair to the HSE, it will argue that children who were not in special schools did not get the same level of access, but children in special schools have severe and profound issues that need attention from the variety of therapists.

The issue described by Deputy Martin Kenny is not acceptable. Dual diagnosis and treatment should be available. There is an obligation on the HSE to provide for that young child and not to close doors to the treatment she requires.