In Swords, a network for autistic people and their parents grows

Conor Tyrrell said he got his diagnosis relatively late. He was in his 30s, it was the pandemic.

He was commuting home to Swords from a new job in the city, thinking about how he’d lost contact with people from his previous role.

“I was feeling really down, and really sort of like I made a mistake moving to this job,” Tyrrell said on the phone on Sunday.

It was April, so it was Autism Awareness Month, Tyrrell says. “And a YouTuber that I follow uploaded a video basically saying, I'm telling you all that I'm autistic.”

The YouTuber was talking about challenges making friends, struggling in certain environments, “this kind of stuff”, Tyrrell said. 

“And the more I was watching, I was like, that really sounds like stuff that would apply to me. But that can't be me, I'm not autistic,” he said. 

For the next two or three months, before he went for his assessment, he dug into the subject, reading everything he could about autism.

By the time he got his official diagnosis, it wasn’t much of a question, he says. “I was like, yeah, this … this fits me almost to a T,” he said.

After that, he started looking for resources for autistic adults in the area, but couldn’t find any. 

Last year, though, he learned that people in Swords were organising a neurodiversity network. He decided to go to one of their first meetings in April. Now he’s the chair.

The Swords Neurodiversity Network brings together autistic people, and parents of autistic people, in a group chat, teen meetups, and parent meetups – to share problems, offer advice, pool ideas, set up events, push initiatives, and more.

The beginning

The idea for the network started with Diarmuid O’Donovan, manager of the Abhainn Adult Autism Service at St Michael’s House, which provides services to people with intellectual disabilities.

As well as John Smyth, who works as a psychologist, and has since – in December 2024 – been co-opted onto Fingal County Council as Sinn Féin councillor.

Smyth said there’s been a clear need for more resources and consideration of neurodivergent people in Ireland for a long time, and he thought a community effort could help drive that shift. 

"If the government or the local services are not going to be able to meet the need,”  said Smyth. “We have to try and bulk that gap from the bottom up.” 

Smyth says he had heard about O’Donovan’s efforts, and reached out to him. “He told me that he'd already been kind of getting this up and running, and then it was like, well, let's, let's just grab the bull by the horns,” Smyth says.

They decided to organise a public meeting.

By and for

They hosted it at River Valley Community Centre in Swords this past spring. 

It went well, and they decided to have three or four more meetings at local community centres, asking residents what they would like to see out of a Swords Neurodiversity Network, and how they wanted it to run.

“They turned into impromptu focus groups, and we ended up hearing from loads of family members and autistic individuals,” he said. 

One clear thing that came out of that was that the group should be led by autistic individuals and their parents.

Like Karen Fitzpatrick, the network’s secretary, whose son attended an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) class in a mainstream secondary school. 

He got several suspensions, Fitzpatrick says. “For not following the school’s code of behaviour, which was designed for neurotypical students.”

She was elected as a parent representative on the school’s board of management. But her son was expelled in 2024, and her time on the board ended too.

“That period was incredibly difficult for our family,” she says. “As a single parent, I had to leave my job to support him at home.” 

She said with the shortage of spots for autistic students, he was out of school for nine months.

She couldn’t stay silent after that, she said. She learned about the network forming through a parent who had supported her, Caroline St Leger, who’s also on the committee now.

“One evening she sent me a link to a Facebook post looking for local people to get involved in setting up a network to make Swords a more accessible and inclusive town for the neurodivergent community,” she said. “I didn’t hesitate.”

What does the network do?

The network has three main pillars: education, recreation, and vocation, says Sonia Fitzsimons, who leads the recreation pillar.

"It's kind of to link in with other parents who are going through the same thing,” she says. “To create more recreation for youth, for teens and for adults as well, to kind of get together.”

Fitzsimons said that after getting her child’s diagnosis at age three, it was really hard to know what to do next. 

“You don't know where you're going, what you're doing,” she said. “And you don't know who you to reach out to, and stuff like that.”

She said there’s no better advice than from a parent that's gone through it. 

“And every child is different, no matter whether they’re neurodiverse or not,” Fitzsimons said. “But it's good to have these different ideas, different situations that other people have seen are going through.”

The next step is getting the group registered as part of Fingal’s Public Participation Network (PPN) to help it get money to host more events and things.

The group are go-getters, people looking for solutions, positive changes, said communications officer and design support Caroline St Leger.

“I can't sit around crying about what I don't have or pointing fingers, blaming, looking for someone else to solve my problems,” St Leger says. “I need to be part of the solution.”  

“And we want to make a change like, you know, with the decision makers and policy makers,” she says.

She said her son is gifted academically, so she imagines he’ll get a job in STEM and do fine. But that’s not the case for everyone, she said – the autism spectrum is diverse.

So she’s most focused on pushing the vocational pillar: finding and creating jobs in Swords that are a good fit for autistic people.

“You stick with us” 

Last week, the network had its first meeting with everyone’s new roles designated, their goals outlined. 

Tyrrell said taking the chair has been a big change for him. 

At the first few meetings, he hardly said a few words, he says. He’s never been in politics, or a leader.

But “just since joining the group, my wife has noticed that I'm way more confident in myself. I'm way more outgoing,” Tyrrell said.

He said he’s made really good friends.

“I still have all the autism stuff there, but I've got a better understanding of how to manage myself day to day,” he says.

Fitzpatrick said she’s also seen an increase in confidence in her 16-year-old, and she also realised some issues she had faced weren’t parenting failure.

At the first adult meetup last week, there was a man who came bounding up, St Leger says.

He was lovely, warm, friendly, big and strong.  But they asked, and he said he didn’t have a job – but he would love one.

“I said, ‘You stick with us,’” she said. “We're going to help you sort that out.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.