Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I apologise but we will not have time. I am very sorry, Ms Walsh. There is an agriculture committee meeting taking place here very shortly. I looked to see if we could have additional time, but unfortunately we cannot. A few members have sent emails and text messages as the meeting has been happening, so there is a desire for us to come back to this again. I think there would be general interest in having that. I apologise, because it is frustrating. We have all been at the receiving end where you are speaking against the clock, and I am sorry because it is a very important matter.

I sincerely thank the Fórsa representatives who were here. I thank the representatives of Embrace Autism who were in session 1 as well. I especially thank our SNAs, who gave very honest and frank testimony. A lot of us know what they do day to day, but it is very good we hear it officially in the Houses of the Oireachtas, including the good of the profession and some of the limitations they face day in and day out. That was very important to the body of work we have done here today. I sincerely thank the officials representing the NCSE, namely, Mr. Torrance, Ms Walsh and Mr. Kearney. I am sorry for cutting through them while they were contributing. Representing the Department we had Ms Corcoran, Mr. Hanlon and Mr. Walsh. I very much appreciate it. No member got all their questions answered because the clock was against them. We really need both entities here to have a liaison officer we can go to so that some of these questions can be taken out of the Chamber, basically. The officials have given an indication they will have one in the NCSE and they might advise us on that in due course. Separately to all this, our committee agreed last week we would be requesting a liaison person in the Department of education. It is not directly to the officials who are here but they might just talk to people.