Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That programme is very important and the reason we highlighted it as a committee is that we saw the figures from 2022 which were alarming. Last year 14% of students in the approximately 130 special schools had a school-based summer programme but 3.6% of the 6,500 children with higher needs only got two weeks of a school-based summer programme. I am using percentages but we are talking about children and the statistics show that fewer than 100 children out of over 8,500 children in our special schools got four weeks of a programme. That is why we felt that it needed to be highlighted. We need to expand the programme and increase the number of professionals and student professionals working to provide the summer programme.