It did not take Steven Loughlin's parents very long to discover that there was something different about their fourth son.
"He never cried," his father Gerry recalls. "If he fell he wouldn't cry. He was quite happy with his own company. He wouldn't look at you. He wouldn't cuddle. He could just about tolerate his mother's affection. "
These warning signs were picked up by Steven's parents from about the age of two, "but it took us another 2½ years to get the medical profession to accept that there was something wrong with Steven", he says.
It then took the family from Offaly 10 years of battling to get Steven (now 16) the services he needed. He is now in primary school and has a special needs assistant who also provides home tuition.
However, the family is fighting to retain the home tuition as it is under review by the Department of Education.
"That is the life of a parent of a child with autism. You are fighting the State every step of the way because their primary function is to protect their budget," Mr Loughlin says.
He has no doubt that earlier detection and treatment of his son's condition would have made a major difference to Steven's well-being.
"If the health services and the education services at the time were what they should have been, Steven could possibly be capable of independent living. Now he won't be and that is the long-term cost to society for the neglect of Steven."
Mr Loughlin welcomes yesterday's launch of a Europe-wide survey into the prevalence of autism and says the data will show just how much money could be saved by the State if autism was picked up earlier.
"You have to remember that a child born with autism is born into a world of confused isolation and every element of life has to be broken down and explained to them. If you get them young enough and if you explain it to them well enough, they can come out the other end quite well."
