Ms Catriona Galster:

The children I work with are of preschool age, and while they are attached to a mainstream primary school, they are in an autism classroom. They move on to special classes and special schools and often to mainstream schools. Most of the children at that age would not be in a regular preschool because they just would not be able to cope. What we do is essential to get them on the path to a full education. It is not enough for the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, to say we are there to increase the independent living skills of children in schools. That is not what we are there to do. We are there to help them to access the education they are entitled to by constitutional right.

Many of our students will go on to have successful and independent lives, to have jobs and to succeed. In the absence of SNAs being there to support them, they would be back where they were in 1979 or prior to it, which is not being educated at all or being put into special schools.