Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I had better keep within the time limit after reminding everybody else to do so. I fully welcome the legislation passed this week. It is extremely important and will benefit thousands of children throughout the country. We will see children being educated in their own communities with their siblings. This is extremely important. I know the Minister of State is passionate about special education and that she is making very positive moves for families throughout the country. I fully support the school inclusion model. We have spoken about it on a number of occasions in recent years. I would like to see it expanded even faster. Deputy Flaherty mentioned issues in our county where there is a severe lack of services. If the Minister of State is looking at expanding the model I ask her to consider a model in our county where there are 36 primary schools.

That would be an ideal area to expand, especially given that it is lacking in services due to the lack of occupational therapy and speech and language therapy staff.

The summer provision has been highlighted by a number of members. We have it on our programme for discussion in the autumn. That might be a good opportunity for the Minister of State to come back in to discuss the provision. There is a major issue with the lack of schools engaging, the lack of special schools with a programme and the lack of in-school provision. Parents send me Facebook pages advertising people who are available to do the homeschool-based provision and looking for four or five families to come together for it. The children for whom we set up the July provision a number of years ago are not getting it now. Summer is a long period of time. I agree with Deputy Harkin about the possibility of using ECCE staff. They are qualified, some with a master's in education, but are not eligible to take part in it. I would love to see all schools running July provision. We could have ECCE staff coming in who are fully qualified. We could have speech and language and occupational therapy students from the colleges working in schools during the summer for work experience. If not every school, we could look at bringing two or three schools together. Senator Wall spoke to me about this issue as well. In a town in Kildare, four schools came together and agreed that at least one of them would have a full four-week provision. All the teachers from the four schools worked in the one school to make sure the kids in the area were covered. That is something that needs to happen. I thank the Minister of State for her commitment and passion for special education.