Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. I echo some of what he said in his opening statement. Progress is being made and steps are being taken in the correct direction, and it is worth again acknowledging the work the witnesses from DCU presented earlier in their principles for an autism-friendly university. In regard to funding, if I understand the Minister, 19 project plans have applied for what is initially a €3 million pot. I doubt he will be in a position to announce which institutions applied for funding, but within those 19 applications, are we capturing a broad cross-section of HEI buildings?

Is it a competitive process? What quantum of funding are we providing for each of the projects? Are we saying to these 19 institutions that they are all assured of funding or that only a certain amount of funding is available? We do not want to create winners and losers here because if we do that among the project plans, we do it to the student body and we do not want that.

This applies to this phase but also to the second phase. I am slightly concerned about an approach whereby we ask people to bring us their ideas. Are we scaffolding these ideas and are we helping the HEIs to structure the ideas? Are we acknowledging the excellent work that is already being done, for example, by the likes of DCU and helping it apply it to its individual context? I do not think anybody would argue that they have the perfect remedy in place already, but we should be trying to structure and scaffold in such a way that we can take learnings from one another and not try to redesign the wheel on every single phase. I will leave my questions at that.