Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We have agreed a process on this one and it will remain open. We are all agreeable to that, so I will move on. The next item is petition No. P000010/17 from Ms Pauline Bleach on public consultation in the planning process. There are two aspects to the petition which seeks to make public consultation a legal requirement and to account for 20% of outcomes in planning decisions and to create an independent arbiter of facts and process with power to order revisions or reruns using correct processes and facts. It is proposed to forward a copy of the response from the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government to the petitioner and to close the petition. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The last petition for consideration is petition No. P00023/17 from Ms Judith Dunphy and Mr. Shane Clarke seeking the opening of an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, unit in all primary and secondary schools. The petition outlines that parents often have to bring their children to other counties, towns or locations which are miles away from their homes to access schools with ASD classes. We propose to correspond once again with the Department asking it to outline the criteria required for a school to quality for an ASD class, the steps it takes to ensure there are ASD places for eligible primary schools and statistics on the geographical locations of all new ASD units in the past five years. We propose to correspond with Autism Ireland and other autism advocacy groups to ascertain their views as to whether there is a need for ASD classes in all mainstream schools and if they have evidence of same. We will forward a copy of the response from the Department to the petitioners, advise them of the further steps being taken by the committee and outline that the petition will remain open.