Mr. Frank Hanlon:

As regards the EPSEN Act review, we are going through a huge consultation phase at the moment, and the kinds of things the Deputy talks about, including engaging children with autism and other disabilities, are a really important part of that. We had our online consultation and had 28,000 responses to it and a huge number of open submissions as well. We have gone through the online submissions and have taken on board the submissions we have received from a huge number of stakeholders and groups. They will now feed into a range of focus groups, and that will be the critical part of the review because the most important part of those focus groups is getting the voice of the child and the voice of people who actually live through the experience of being in school every day and finding out exactly what their thoughts are about it.

We have, as part of the EPSEN Act work, an advisory group that has been really important and informative for us in working through the best way of doing this. We have engagement with many stakeholders from disability groups. Deputy Tully mentioned AsIAm. We are working closely with AsIAm on best accessing those children with autism, for instance, who can give us a real insight into what it means to live under that legislation. When we are finished those focus groups, that will feed into the overall recommendations we want to put forward as to what the EPSEN Act might look like in the future. It is likely to be early next year when we have that report ready. There are so many submissions in the consultation phase that we just want to take our time and make sure that we get all those voices heard and get the best possible input into what will happen with that legislation in the future.