Mr. Richard Dolan:

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to hear all the groups. It is very useful to us. What is coming through is that access to education is a complicated issue. There are a range of challenges and a range of stakeholders and, therefore, a range of solutions. It is not an area of life where one size fits all. As regards the contacts the Department of Education and Skills has in this area, this Department touches every area of Irish life, so we have contacts with all our colleague-Departments and with a whole range of groups which work with us in partnership to develop the education system.

There are solutions from the Department. We go through early years, first level, second level and on to further and higher education. There may not be time to go through all the activities we are engaged in today. We have made a submission and if the committee requires any further information, it should contact us.

I refer to some of the specific touch-points. The national access plan has been mentioned and there is an implementation steering group overseeing it, which encompasses a wide range of disability groups, access officers from higher education and a number of other groups. For instance, a report on lone parents was published in August 2017 and there is a group overseeing the implementation of that report. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and a range of Departments, with which we work, are represented on it. We do not work in isolation. I missed the second point the Chair made. I did not get the opportunity to write it down.

The data plan was mentioned. As part of the national access plan one of the issues was that we needed better data on access. A data plan was published. It was developed by Trutz Haase, a consultant, who unfortunately passed away recently. It was a very useful piece of work. The next step is to put in place a group to implement that data plan.