Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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354. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the extra resources, in terms of hours and facilities, he will allocate to deal with the upsurge in autism nationally, and in County Carlow in particular. [13608/14]

Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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357. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the extra resources, in terms of hours and facilities, he will allocate to deal with the upsurge in autism nationally, and in County Carlow in particular. [13639/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 354 and 357 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs), is responsible for processing applications from schools for special educational needs supports, including the allocation of resource hours to schools, including supports for children with autism.

The NCSE operates within my Department's established criteria for the allocation of Special Education supports and the staffing resources available to my Department.

The NCSE has invited schools to make applications for resource teaching support for children with assessments of low incidence special educational needs, as defined by my Departments Circular 02/05, for the coming 2014/15 school year, by 26th March, 2014. All schools who wish to make applications to the NCSE for resource teaching support should now submit such applications to the NCSE for their consideration. Subsequently the NCSE will advise all schools including those in Co. Carlow of their revised resource allocations in advance of the new school year.

The Deputy will be interested to note that NCSE has advised that, to their knowledge, there are no prevalence rates for autism which are specific to the Carlow area. However, Irish research at Dublin City University has reported a preliminary finding of a national prevalence rate for ASD of 1% and this is in line with international estimates.