Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will not ask too many questions because of time constraints.

There are far too many examples of children's rights not being met. I find I am not shocked by any of the stories that have been shared today. I hear them in my constituency. I am not a member of this committee but I could come here every day and focus purely on special education and inclusion. Tomorrow is the deadline for submissions on the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act. If the witnesses would like to share any of their submissions with me, I would like to read them. It is clear the inconsistency across schools in people's lived experiences is one of the biggest issues we face. Parents can go to one school and feel their children's needs are being met, that they are heard and that the school is child centric, and then they can go to another school and it has some shockingly bad practices. Mr. O'Malley's story underlines how people in schools believe they are doing the right thing. People are trying but are ignorant about how to take an inclusive approach.

As shocking as it is that training is not available to professionals, the training must go much wider. It must be given to officials in Departments, to politicians and to every board of management. Someone who has a lived experience of special education should be sitting on every board of management. There are many intersectional issues. Senator Carrigy and I have raised the blockages to opportunities for education and therapies. There are even blockages in the courses with respect to the number of therapists. I have been told the panels for our CDNT are being blown up, so to speak, and people are being recruited abroad, but I have not seen the results we need to see. This needs to be one hell of a report. If it merely outlines the different cross-cutting issues, if it at least names them and lists the issues in one place, it will be a framework of or guide to what people need to focus on. This will take ages. The system is broken and children are suffering. I thank all the witnesses for their time. It must be a hell of a report and I know it will be.