Mr. John Curtis:

I wish to comment briefly in the context of our engagement with schools in our sector. There is extraordinary positivity among schools. I know that at least one of the fee-charging schools has actively campaigned to have a special needs class set up in the school. That school has not been accommodated yet. Perhaps things might change in that area as well.

We are into an evolving area. We talk about language. It is indicative of where we are. We have come from "unit" to "classroom". I was talking recently to someone with considerable experience in this field. He said that in his school they have tried to use the special classroom for mainstream classes as well. In a sense it is important for the optics of what goes on in the school. The idea is to think about the context of what special classrooms are, what they might be and what they might not be.

I will come back to the point Ms Griffin made in the context of specialisation. This is why we believe it is so important that there should be someone who has special responsibility for special educational needs. Since the complexity of timetables in post-primary schools makes it difficult to manage, we have to go back to training. The more training that is available for people, the better. This could include, for example, diploma programmes and so on. That should be looked at.

Ms Dempsey made a particular point about therapeutic supports. In essence, the National Council for Special Education is looking at a new model around special needs. Work is being done around this. This will be a wrap-around model for the pupils in our care in many different ways, but it is important that we fund therapeutic support in terms of speech and language therapy and occupational therapy. It is especially important in the context of the psychological services. We have difficulty in schools in accessing support around child and adolescent mental health services. There is scope for considerable work to be done in these areas. This is exciting and great work is being done and I believe it will continue.