Mr. Jim Lennon:

Putting it in a policy context, the Department in Dublin has spent considerable time with NEPS and the NCSE producing audit and good practice guidelines. The Middletown Centre for Autism was heavily involved in that effort, together with a range of other bodies and professionals in Ireland. The output of that is a very clear and excellent distillation of best practice to date, based on research and evidence. If we were to take that model and those good practice guidelines, we would wind up with a much more autism-competent environment in schools and more autism-competent schools. The reality for a child with autism is that everybody in the school needs to understand their needs, from the caretaker to the cook, principal, special educational needs organiser, SENO, and whoever else. They need to understand what autism is. They need to have a neurodiverse context within which to put the child's situation and they need a set of behaviours that will make the environment feel inclusive and welcoming for those children and will enable their individual needs to be met. The good practice guidelines exist and they represent a distillation of research. It is not the case that something new has to be done.