Mr. John Curtis:

Let me follow on from the point Mr. Adam Harris made on good practice in the system. There is considerable good practice in the system and in our schools. We aspire to having all our schools inclusive in every way, especially in the context of special educational needs. In our organisation we did considerable work over recent years just to support schools in that space. We have special educational needs advisory groups. We have a DEIS advisory group set up this year, again to help schools in this space who are looking after children with special educational needs. On occasion, we can be under-resourced. Ours is the under-resourced sector; everybody knows that.

Incrementally, we are all dealing with the challenges special educational needs bring to us. There is now fantastic work being done. The new special educational needs allocation model is working very well. It will be re-examined over the next couple of years. The NCSE is very much engaged with Mr. Eamon Stack, who has done marvellous work in this sphere, in the context considering long-term needs apropos SNAs or inclusion support systems for schools. It is an incremental space. We are all learning and we are all developing. There is marvellous work being done in schools.

I was struck by something when listening to Senator Lynn Ruane. When I started as a principal, in 1995, I did not know what Asperger's syndrome was. Therefore, we are all in that educative space. It is important for our schools and teachers that we up-skill ourselves. In the context of up-skilling people who would be able to take on the responsibility in our schools, I was in touch with somebody in one of the third level institutions only this morning. That individual said the institution is very oversubscribed and does not have the places for people who want to up-skill and train in the area of special educational needs and autism. That is fantastic in some respects because it would not have been the case four years ago. There is growing awareness of our responsibilities and needs in the system. Since we deal with schools, we see at first hand that there is fantastic work being done on the ground. Can we improve it? We certainly can. We are very excited about some of the projects we are engaged in. Mr. Adam Harris's project is just fantastic. It has been very educative for us also as educators in the Joint Managerial Body. We are still on that learning path ourselves, and we will continue to try to improve.