Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

As I have made clear before, and for the reasons I have outlined tonight, new, exclusive ABA centres will not be approved. However, the Government is committed to long-term funding for the pilots, subject to agreement with the Department of Education and Science on standards that will enable the Department to support them as primary schools for children with autism. The type of standards that must be agreed include the qualifications of the staff working in the centres and the type of educational programme available to the children. All children in the country are entitled to be taught by a fully qualified teacher and so are children with autism. We are working very hard to try to obtain agreement on the conversion of the existing pilots into special schools.

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