Ms Jennifer Doran:

Going back to the teaching and specialist qualifications, we found that many countries internationally have these requirements that teachers will have additional specialist qualifications before they can teach in either a special class or special school. In fact, our inspectorate report did a review of teaching practices in ASD classes. It found that many teachers were not applying autism-specific teaching approaches. We identified this as a specific need. Some of the most vulnerable children are being educated, in some cases, by teachers without additional training. Some of whom are newly-qualified teachers who are put into the classroom because they are willing and happy to engage. They may not be best placed because they are not the most experienced and they do not have the training or the qualifications. It is a strong feature of our policy advice in regard to that. We have done quite a bit of research into it. We also recommended it in previous pieces of policy advice. We feel quite strongly that additional support and training should be provided to the teachers beyond what we provide ourselves. I cannot answer for Carrigaline. I will leave that to Mr. Kearney.