Dr. Niall Muldoon:

My response will not be much different. These sorts of issues are foreseeable. We just need the Department of Education to be proactive around rights and so on. Planning permissions for the building of housing estates take to two to three years. We need to identify the role for education there in terms of whether it has been planned for as part of that development. Those things can be done.

On the issue of the child with special educational needs, I have no problem with forward planning for two years, but one cannot create a situation wherein children are disadvantaged through that forward planning. We need to get our system working much more smoothly so that we can identify those children early, as well as their special needs and how they need to be met, so that the primary school is able to pass on that information quickly. Improving all of the areas will make a difference in that regard.