Dr. David Duffy:

I thank the Senator for his question. On school places, I would agree entirely with my Fórsa colleagues. The NCSE has detailed information on students who are receiving support through the education system. I would have imagined it would have the data that would be most applicable in that context.

School places also raise the question about buildings. If we can plan in advance, we will not be in a situation, as we seem to find ourselves frequently at the end of the summer period, of trying to find or create school places where I would have thought we would have known a significant period of time beforehand.

What ends up happening then, with the best of intentions by everybody, is the special class gets created in a prefab out in the car park. With all due respect to people trying to solve the difficulties at short notice, I am not sure what message it sends to the students that they are the ones in the prefab. I would have thought the special class should be genuinely integrated with the whole school body, and a prefab in the car park does not necessarily say that.

I thank the Senator for his comments and question on the DARE scheme. It needs some additional funding - not a huge amount, but some - and it needs some additional staffing so it can provide further supports to students before they enter college. There also need to be additional supports after students have entered college so they can deal with what is quite a significant transition for any student, whether they have autism or not. It requires support for the access offices, the disability offices and additional support for counselling services in schools for any student who needs to access them, not just any one particular group. All students should be able to access them.