Ms M?ir?n N? Ch?ileachair:

The INTO collaborates with other organisations. We have a consortium of organisations that we deal with and it is run out of our general secretary's office. It includes the Children's Rights Alliance, the Ombudsman for Children, the National Parents Council, Barnardos and various other advocacy groups. We do not agree with them all of the time, but where we do agree with them, we campaign vigorously together. We add weight to their campaigns and they add weight to ours.

Were the Senator to ask me what our main request would be for teachers around inclusion, I would point to two areas. The first would be class sizes, although we admit that there has been a welcome decrease in those. The second would be quality CPD for teachers so that every teacher feels sufficiently confident, competent, skilled and up to date.

We all study it at initial teacher education. I could be out of the college for ten years before I am asked to take a special class in my school. There is a time lag between what I learned in college in quite a different situation and real-life experience. This is a matter of the kind of access to professional learning communities, with other special class teachers, with other set teachers, with other schools and quality CPD that is available in a timely manner. The biggest asks for teachers today would be class size and CPD.