Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-28
============================================================

Micheál Carrigy (FG), Longford-Westmeath

I speak as a member of the all-party Joint Committee on Autism. At a meeting yesterday, the autism innovation strategy, launched by the Government in August 2024, came up. As part of that strategy, in one of the points related to advocacy, understanding and acceptance, we stated we would establish an autism innovation fund. The fund is to be twofold, to provide for funding for innovative projects, initiatives and activities designed to support and empower autistic people around Ireland and, second, to support research that aims to increase our understanding of autism and autistic people. To date, to my knowledge, no procedures have been put in place and no funding has been spent in that regard. In budget 2025, €2 million was budgeted for this and nothing was spent, and €2 million has been budgeted for 2026. When will we see this money rolled out to organisations that are advocating on behalf of the autistic community throughout the country?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-28