Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)

Some of the schools that have special classes and some that do not, particularly at post-primary level, engaged with the Middletown Centre this spring. When I went to the Middletown Centre, they nearly knew more about it than I knew myself because they had gained the information at school level. The information and the guidance that Middletown gave those schools is invaluable. Going back to the first question regarding AIM, one thing that struck me is that we have constantly talked about silos within the public sector and each Department. For accountability and everything else, it has to be funnelled in a particular way, but there could be shared information so that we have the best possible outcomes for children and their families. We are working very closely during the past number of months. One of the decisions that was made very early on at the Cabinet committee on disability related to the AIM programme, getting that information across to us and to the Department of education and that we would have the information about children on domiciliary care so that we could plan better for the future. It seems like a simple thing, but if we can get those simple things right, we can be in a far better position to make informed decisions for families and children into the future.