Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank the witnesses for being here. This is an important and time-bound committee that has quite a lot of work to do within a nine-month timeframe. Even thought we must take a much wider view of autism than just education, it would be widely acknowledged that children's access to appropriate education is a significant part of how they experience the world. It is not children with autism but all children.

I will be a bit all over the map on this. I have quite a number of questions to put to the witnesses. I looked fairly closely at the policy advice paper No. 5, which dates from 2014 and which is a bit outdated. My questions concern timelines around the provision of special education supports to children. Working off these 2014 figures, it was estimated that about 63% of children with autism were in a mainstream classroom whether that be supported or unsupported. Would that proportion broadly be the same or has it changed greatly?