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

I will try to answer as best I can. Obviously, any proposal the Department comes up with would need to be in agreement with the special education consultative forum I set up that comprises advocacy groups and other stakeholders. Any proposals, effectively, would need the forum's sign-off.

On the legislation and the planning, the Deputy will be aware that even the Ombudsman for Children noted and acknowledged the work over the past two years in terms of our forward planning. We now have a geographical information system, GIS, forecasting model where data is shared in real time from the planning and building unit with the NCSE. That was not done before so it should help with forward planning into the future. There is also the fact we now have a commitment from the Department that all new schools will automatically have an SEN base in future. That means 1,000 post-primary schools will have the four classrooms and then pro rata for medium-sized and smaller schools after that. That should make a big difference.

The inspectorate report on provision for students with autism was published in March 2022 and we are in the process of setting up a working group around that because obviously Covid interrupted it. However, some of the main findings are pertinent to the Deputy's question. Some schools, we found, are operating restrictions in their enrolment policies at primary and post-primary level. Some post-primary schools explicitly prioritised enrolment for students with higher cognitive functioning or for students who could easily integrate into mainstream classes which was thereby denying places for students with more complex needs. In fact, the enrolment policy for post-primary special classes was found to be clear in just half of the settings. The evidence would suggest learners with more pronounced autism needs and co-occurring learning needs encounter difficulties enrolling in special classes in these primary and post-primary schools. Some of them are directed towards home tuitiion or indeed special schools. The report also indicated some students' placement in a special class is inappropriate. There were students who should have been fully enrolled in mainstream classes because their needs did not merit special class support. There was also an issue around placement reviews. It is important to note that in the context of the Deputy's question.

She also mentioned transport. There are 15,500 children travelling. She is correct in that and we do not dispute what the Ombudsman for Children is saying. That is at a cost of €289 million per year. The first duty we have is to find an appropriate placement for a child. Then our second task is to try to ensure they can attend a placement in their locality. In Cavan there are 46 special classes and one special school and there are 36 in Monaghan at present. Obviously, it is completely desirable that a child would go to school in their locality but it is not always completely possible.

On summer provision, we are putting €40 million into that this year, as the Deputy knows. We expect an increase in participation this year and hope about 48,000 students will participate. There were about 38,000 participants last year. There has been an increase in uptake with special schools and classes over the past two years.

We also have inclusion programmes for Ukrainians and others.