Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It is the whole idea of making educational settings more comfortable for these children and ensuring they can flourish, for want of a better term. Does that fit into the whole-school approach? In a perfect world, every child would be dealt with individually and would have a bespoke solution. It might not be possible to do that under a whole-school approach but there are a lot of fundamental things that can be corrected for one person that will benefit everybody else, particularly people with autism and others who fall into a similar bracket. There are different parts in play. As we discussed earlier, it is about having the whole-school approach, introducing those strategies, engaging with all the staff who operate within the school, having the necessary conversations with parents, even if that is via the school, and then ensuring there is an individualised approach by special needs assistants and teachers, working from the point of view of what is best practice. It is the crossover between making things comfortable for students and getting the best bang for our buck from an educational point of view.