Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. It is great to be here. This is my first time at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Autism and it is wonderful to have it, thanks to the Cathaoirleach.

I have just gone through Mr. Kearney's opening statement and I thank him for the detail given there. It is very important. As he has mentioned, we have 13,000 school students with autism. That is a lot of families and households who are dealing with this. It is good to have this important focus. I am curious about some of what is in the opening statement, which references 3,500 SNAs. We had a group in with the education committee last week and I understood it was 1,000 at the moment and 500 that have previously been trained. Is that 3,500 over a number of years? That is the first question.

The census has just been done and the population is 5.1 million, which is excellent. Lots of people are wanting to come and live in Ireland. Of course, I want them all to come and live in the west and take the pressure off Dublin. However, we have challenges with capacity in areas like Ballinasloe where I am based. We have St. Teresa's as the special needs school there dealing with moderate to severe complex needs as well, which is so important. That graduation from primary to post-primary is going to be crucial. Then there is the role of the SNAs. To understand this a little better, if SNAs are a primary school-level support, what happens when you move into secondary school? The SNAs, from what I understand, are not going to be providing care in each subject when their students are at secondary school level. I apologise if the officials have commented on this before but will they highlight how that could be managed, especially with that increase we see coming down the tracks? It is something that is going to be very important, especially where we already have issues with capacity? In another few years it is going to be an even bigger pressure.