Tipperary girl wins Garda National Youth Award for her tireless campaigning

"The following year, she went on to sit a Leaving Certificate maths exam to continue raising national awareness of these issues, and scored an incredible 97% again.

"Cara is the first & only child in Ireland’s history to sit both exams at this young age while still in national school, and this attracted much media coverage. Cara fundraised to strengthen the autism services available to students in her local Ardfinnan National School and Scoil Chormaic Special School, which her brothers Neil and John both attend.

"Cara’s activism eventually raised more than €75,000 for both schools, which is now being allocated to autism assessments, speech & language and occupational therapy services. Cara’s fundraising has now made it easier for students in both schools to be assessed for neurodiversity and to receive Services. For example, both schools now have a speech & Language therapist attend each week, paid for by the funds raised from Cara’s endeavours.

"Cara’s extraordinary mathematical ability is matched by her passion and activism. Her campaign continued into 2024 and has accelerated dramatically over the last few months.  She has held extensive negotiations with the Taoiseach and his Government colleagues, and the Taoiseach has directly credited Cara & her campaign with the allocation of €6.89million of Government Funding to deal with the long backlogs of Assessments of Needs for autistic children. The Taoiseach labelled this as “Cara’s Fund” and promised her last August that he would increase funding to this Fund in the Budget." 

"That promise was kept, and the biggest breakthrough of all came just two weeks ago, when the Taoiseach formally wrote to Cara informing her as follows - “Funding of €10 million has been allocated in Budget 2025 to ‘Cara’s Fund’ which as you know is providing private assessments for long waiting families.” He also went on to say “The benefit of this initiative is very clear, 1,092 AONs (Assessments of Needs) were commissioned from private providers during the months of June, July and August. The increased funding means that next year, we are guaranteeing that more long waiting families will be able to access private assessments. It will also provide for more assessment and liaison officers in assessment teams. Thank you for your ongoing advocacy and support, as you can see it is truly making a difference.”