Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank her for her opening remarks. I want to begin by congratulating her and thanking her very sincerely for the recent opening and ongoing growth in the Our Lady of Hope School in my constituency of Dublin South Central. I know that a considerable amount of work was carried out by her good self and her officials and also with the Minister, Deputy Foley. I just want to thank her very much for that. It is good to see. There was a cry-out from the fantastic advocates on the ground and movement by those parents over the past number of years to constantly champion the use of building that was there that could be used for special needs education. From the moment she started in that Ministry, she acted very quickly on it and I really appreciate that.

My home constituency in Dublin South Central is one of the greatest impacted from a lack of special education places in schools. There seem to be historically older schools that, for whatever reason, are very slow to sign up and come online with the additional places that are desperately needed. Children are looking across the road at schools that they have no way of accessing. The Minister of State, her Department and her officials did an extraordinary amount of work in marrying up a child moving from one school to a school that is a natural feeder that did not have the provision. This is a rolling, extraordinary work in progress on a school-by-school, child-by-child basis, when in actual fact, it could be moved to a greater global place where a macro plan is imposed on the schools where there is this level of hesitancy. I would really appreciate an update specific to Dublin 6 and Dublin 6W because that is where there is this chronic shortage.

Children with special education needs have been particularly impacted by Covid. If they were in mainstream, they perhaps lost supports when there was teacher shortage in the Delta round of Covid. In addition, they were out of school and impacted and, in some instances, there was evidence of regression in their education. Is the Department doing any research on that? What actions are in place? Will the summer education programme run? Is there a possibility of special needs assistant, SNAs playing a role in that? I note that on the SNA education programme, they all graduated recently. I saw photographs and they are incredibly proud of just how professional the recognition is, how professionally they work and how well they are doing. They have learned even greater skills as well. We need a special Covid response in this area.

Lastly, I welcome the Minister of State’s announcement on ISL. Does she have any idea of the timeline and when that will be up and running? That will be really appreciated.