Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Hartman. The transition from primary school to secondary level and then from there to third level was mentioned. We have a group of students from Cnoc Mhuire Secondary School, County Longford, and they will attest to this. We can understand the difficulty for someone on the autism spectrum moving between schools. I met people from a school at an enterprise competition recently and their enterprise proposal was a booklet for sixth-class students in primary schools to help them transition into secondary school. It was possible to tick boxes to allow pupils to indicate what school they had decided to go to. When they went to the school, then, they had a little booklet to which they could refer to help them. Perhaps we could look at this approach. Especially given the way technology is now, we should be able to use it to help those on the autism spectrum going into secondary school or on to third-level education. Some witnesses who appeared before the committee, I think from Dublin City University, DCU, were working on an app that could be used to help students going on to either secondary or third-level education or both.