Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I promise the Deputy we will do this. I met representatives from Down Syndrome Ireland recently. I talked to parents who said to me that, in some cases, not only are they not seeing their children progress when they leave school, which is the wish all parents have for their children, but are actually seeing them regress. What a horrific thing for parents to have to say, that at the time they see other children going to college, training and all these exciting things, they worry about their children going backwards in terms of their well-being, intellectual stimulation and the like.

What is good about the mapping exercise, and the reason I used Trinity as an example, is the question I ask every day - if we can do this in Trinity, why are we not doing it in every other university across the country? There are similar programmes in some. We will use the education and training board network, the colleges of further education and the higher education institutions. We will engage with disability stakeholders and link with the Department of Education because that transition piece is absolutely crucial. We will get this done. This is a major priority for me, my Department and the Government as a whole. We will also feed it into the development of the new national access plan.

See this speech in context