Ms Martina Mannion:

When we have been here before we have talked about our priority being where we had children who did not have school places and that is where we have expanded our special schools in the last number of years. We have seven new special schools in the last three years since Mr. Loftus and I dedicated teams to working on this. They have been especially focused on those larger urban areas and we have had three new special schools open in Cork, the same number in Dublin and we have had expanded capacity across a number of them. Part of what we are trying to achieve in our work at the moment is earlier notification of where we might need new special schools. For example, we are aware we need to ideally be able to tell the school system before Christmas where we need the new special school capacity for September 2024.

We have talked the committee through our forward planning process previously. We have worked through it extensively around the specific school planning areas with the NCSE and worked with the HSE on the level of diagnosed special need. We have identified a number of areas, including the area the Cathaoirleach has just spoken about, where we are aware of the pressures and of children travelling. We are now looking with the NCSE at areas where children are currently travelling to across those areas, the number of children who might be looking at a special school placement for September 2024 and September 2025, and the mix of age between primary and post-primary age children because we must ensure we get that correct. We are looking at capacity within the Wicklow and Wexford areas and we are looking at distance travelled. Our plan, which Mr. Loftus has talked about, is to try to maximise the capacity within existing special schools before we move to a situation where we have to open new special schools. This is going to involve a thorough examination of capacity in the special schools system. We have 130 such schools now and it is about how much capacity is there in terms of children moving on to further and higher education and adult services and how much capacity we will need to put into the system.

Our initial view is that we will need significant additional capacity in this area and we are looking to see how we can put in an accommodation solution for that for September 2024 and 2025. We will be dealing with school patrons and the NCSE on that.