Mr. Mark O'Connor:

I did not get a chance to respond on section 29 of the Education Act. We in Inclusion Ireland believe, as do the other disability groups represented, that it should be retained but reformed. There are serious issues with it. Currently, as it stands, section 29 can look at the school policy and whether it was applied fairly; however, it does not look at the soft barriers, or whether a policy in itself is discriminatory. I have looked at quite an amount of them in dealing with advocacy cases. There are quite an amount of them that are blatantly discriminatory. School authorities will say they will take children up to a certain level of disability, but after that level they will not. It does not deal with the fact that a child may be taken into a school for one hour a day. The mum or dad has to sit outside and wait for their child to come out; the child is thrown out after one hour because it is a health and safety risk to keep the child for any longer than the one hour. It does not deal with the fact that a school has taken a child in it must wait for those resources, while the mum and the child are sitting at home for maybe six or eight months waiting for the resources. If we could reform the section 29 appeal system to deal with some of those issues, instead of just looking at policies, that would be helpful. One only has to do a trawl through some of the policies that are publicly available to note that they are not fair, but a section 29 appeal cannot deal with that.

We had one man who had to go to 22 different schools to get his son enrolled in a school. He took a section 29 policy case against one school that was blatantly discriminating against his son. The school authorities said that they were not applying for the resources to have his son come to their school. He took the section 29 policy case but because the school had stuck to its enrolment policy, which was publicly available, it did not have a case to answer, so the young chap ended up having to travel 90 minutes each way to school.