Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understand the frustrations that families of children with special needs have had over recent months. It has been extremely difficult for them and we can all share that concern. I appreciate the Senator's acknowledgement that children in special classes, a total of 10,300, returned to school yesterday. It was not before time but they have got back and that is a positive development. The Senator mentioned that special schools are at 50% capacity. We want to get them back to 100% at the earliest opportunity. While I am not a member of the Cabinet and cannot make those decisions, I imagine that will happen in early March, although no decision on that has yet been made. I hope that will be the case. Further light may emerge following the Cabinet meeting later; that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, it is important that we try to look after children with special educational needs, SEN, who are in mainstream classes. The Senator mentioned junior infants, senior infants, first class and second class. Children with SEN within those class groups will return to in-person learning next week but there is a cohort of children who will fall outside that. She referred in that context to third class, fourth class, fifth class and sixth class. Again, I am not in a position to give any definitive information on when those classes will return but we hope it will be sooner rather than later, and there may be some clarity on that later from the Cabinet. Suffice to say, the industrial relations team within the Department, under the remit of the Minister, has been in continuous engagement with our education partners, namely, parents, schools, boards of management and the unions. One of the priorities of the Government since the outset of the pandemic has been that children with special needs will get back to school as soon as possible.