Mr. Jim Mulkerrins:

They are care assistants rather than special needs assistants. The HSE is not allocated special needs assistants from the National Council for Special Education. The Department also operates a number of special classes. We have 127 early intervention classes for children with autism in mainstream schools. As the AIM programme progresses, we will be able to ascertain over time whether it has been sufficiently successful to enable us to lower our dependence on that type of structure, as well as the HSE structure, and try to move the children in these classes into the AIM programme, like all other children with disabilities. This is a work in progress and I expect it will take four or five years to mature to allow us to identify how it has been working.

Ms Griffin will answer the question on the increasing prevalence of autism. We were asked a question about equity in July provision. We are conscious that we are making such provision for children with autism but not for every child with special educational needs or disabilities. The autism policy advice includes a recommendation, which we expected, based on the approach being inequitable.

It is argued that it is potentially inequitable and that, whatever the provision might be in the future, it should be opened up to children not just with autism but also to those with complex needs. We have commenced discussions in this regard with our colleagues in the cross-sectoral team that I described earlier. It is unclear where we will go with it. We are conscious that parents, while not necessarily wedded to the idea of a July provision, recognise that it is a high level of support and would not like to lose it without it being replaced by something of equal value and significantly better merit. One of the arguments about July provision is that it is not really what parents want, and I have had a number of discussions with parents' representative groups on it, but because it is available, it is all that is available. If we were to change it to something that parents wanted, that might be more suitable and result in better outcomes for children with autism. In doing that, we will examine whether and how it might be extended to cater for children with complex needs. We have had a number of discussions with some autism representative groups as well and they have suggested that providing activities like summer camps might fit the bill. We are still at the exploration stage though.