I thank the Senator for his contribution and his impeccable timing although I am under domestic instructions not to interrupt him or Senator Dolan when they are speaking.

Will the Vice-Chair explain that?

I will, later on.

I want to raise the issue about services with regard to kids who are autistic. There has been a large amount of work done and I compliment the Minister of State on the amount of units that have been set up in the majority of secondary schools, particularly around Cork. It has been of real benefit to communities and societies. There is a gap in the market at the moment that we need to look at, particularly around special schools which kids who are autistic and do not fit into the mainstream programme attend. Children are travelling from Skibbereen, Clonakilty, all the way into Cork city. There is one child travelling an hour and a half on a bus each way. He is getting a very good service in Cork city may I say.

We need to put strategic plans in place so we have special schools in geographic locations so kids do not have to travel to that degree or spend an hour and a half on a bus. We need a practical solution to a problem we have. There has been much work done but we need to make sure the final pieces of the jigsaw are put in place. Those final pieces are special schools for that cohort of kids who do not fit into the normal mainstream schools. There are significant benefits here for the people involved, for the families and for the entire community. I suggest we should organise a debate with the Minister of State with responsibility for special education about those special schools and where we can build on the work done by Senator Carrigy in particular who chairs a special committee on autism, to ensure we put a programme in place to prioritise these kids going forward and the last piece of the jigsaw can be put in place.

I will be talking about the same issue. I did not know Senator Lombard was going to talk about it. I also request a debate with the Minister of State with responsibility for special education on special schools and special needs assistants, SNAs, and teachers in particular. It is important to recognise the amount of funding announced in the budget last month. Some €2.6 billion has been ringfenced for special education. That is 27% of the educational funding in total. As part of that, there will be an extra 1,194 SNAs right across the country which is really significant and is going to bring us up to approximately 20,000 SNAs. We need to discuss the role of SNAs and the importance of the role they play. I think we would all agree that financially we are not recognising the important role they play-----