Dr. Frances O'Connell:

I thank the Deputy for his question. Our organisation has been a technological university for a year and a half, so much of our work now focuses on some of the areas the Deputy addressed. Within my remit, we have a very strong transition and student success agenda and strategy. One of the pillars is evidenced-based decision-making. It is a question of monitoring. If you do not measure, you do not understand what is happening. It is very much about focusing on the areas the Deputy mentioned concerning all our students, including the autistic and those with disabilities.

On progression, because of the nature of the supports we provide to autistic students and the case management approach, we are providing the services to enable students to progress from stages 1, 2 and 3 and into year 4 of level 8 programmes.

On the Deputy's question on work placements and what I call the transition from cradle to graduation, we do considerable work on work placements. In our technological universities, we are very much about applied learning. The majority of our programmes, particularly our level 8 programmes, have work placements in year three. We have to support all our students in this regard.