Ms Paula Prendeville:

It depends on the gender of the student. We tend to see later diagnosis in young females whereas in the male population, they tend to be quite young when they are diagnosed. I am a trained psychologist and have worked as a teacher in early intervention and mainstream classes with children with autism. I have also worked in children's disability network teams so I have a really good sense of the issues of the ground and the holistic issues that crop up. Risk factors emerge early on but they tend to start flagging around eight or nine years of age depending on the developmental trajectories of the young person. You get to a certain stage where they are meeting their developmental goals and the developmental goals start to widen as social communications become more nuanced. Because autism is social communication difficulty, the gaps really start to widen at that stage whereas you tend to see that at a very young age in some young people born with developmental delays who present with autism and other co-occurring complex needs conditions so it really depends on the developmental trajectories of the children.