Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Every child who is deemed to need support gets support. There have been cuts that none of us has liked but we hope to be in a position to increase funding in the near future. We have increased funding on special needs education in terms of the number of resource teachers, SNAs, etc. I welcome Senator Power's statement about the importance of services and that it is important to maintain funding for services generally. Education, obviously, is the one I am particularly concerned with, but there are other services as well.

I also absolutely agree with Senator Power on early education. Since I came into office I have said that it is a priority for me and it will continue to be one. I am setting up an advisory group on early childhood education and I have also commenced an evaluation of all the training and education courses that people working in the area of early childhood education undertake. It does need a lot of cross-departmental work, as it goes across two Departments. My responsibility is for the educational content, while the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is responsible for other elements. I intend to have quite a strong involvement in terms of the educational content. Part of that is setting up the advisory group and examining the courses that educate people in that sector. I am very keen to ensure that we have well educated, highly skilled people in that sector.

I do believe in evaluation in that sector. We need to continue to monitor it. It would be great if we could roll out a second early childhood year, but we do not have the money to do it at the moment.