Ms Gráinne Cullen:

I thank the Senator. One of the drivers behind the first education strategy is exactly as he outlined. The driver is the idea that we have had a lot of things that have started and stopped over the years. There was not a sustained effort in terms of that co-ordination. That has driven a lot of the work we have done over the last two years to get to the point of publication. Establishing these structures, with the two national co-ordinators, and building that team within TESS to drive the implementation of this strategy is a step in the right direction, we hope, to bring together all of the different players and the learning from those really good things that have happened on the ground and finding ways, through the strategy, to encourage those and link them in. There is a piece in there around communities of practice and shared learning.

On the higher policy end of things and the linking to the other services and challenges for the Traveller and Roma community, that sits within the co-ordination of the national Traveller and Roma inclusion strategy, NTRIS, which is under the Department of children. That brings all of the pieces together. We bring our education piece to the table but we will always look at it from the perspective of putting the child at the centre and determining what are the challenges for that child. You then start to build out those collaborative processes and the collaboration between the different Departments and agencies. That is the ambition. We have a six-year strategy. Within that, there are two-year implementation plans. The first two are already one year in and all of the seeds of that work have been planted. It is not new work but it is building on the huge amount of work that had already been done.

The forum itself is our education forum. That is about the Department also trying to look at whether we are integrating our services properly on the ground as well and whether our policies informed by the needs of the Traveller and Roma communities. Does that answer the Senator's questions?