Sir, - On April 25th, 2000, in a speech to the INTO conference in Waterford, the Minister for Education, Michael Woods, made the following pledge with regard to his special needs strategy: "It is for this reason that I am establishing two task forces, one in the area of autism and one in the area of dyslexia, to examine models of provision and make recommendations to me within three months.
"My aim in setting such a tight time-scale is to ensure that I am in a position to act on the recommendations of the task forces in the next school year".
The task force on autism was not in fact set up until mid-September, and I was disturbed and angered to read (EL, February 13th) that the autism task force now has to report into another internal task force established as a result of the Cromien report, which highlighted the shortcomings of the DES and urged urgent reforms. When now can we expect to hear from the task force?
Where services for autism exist at all, they are in crisis. International wisdom is that the best chance of enabling autistic people to live independent lives is to get early intensive intervention before the child reaches the age of seven. Therefore every day of delay matters.
The Minister's notion of urgency and mine are obviously completely at odds and consequently I would call on him to take action immediately to cut out all the red tape to ensure the immediate delivery of the educational services to which our children are entitled as a constitutional right. - Yours, etc.,
Cormac Rennick, PRO, Parents of Autistic Children Together, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15.