Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending. I also thank my committee colleagues and the committee secretariat for ensuring we are all here today having this conversation, because it is very important. Ms McDonagh is absolutely correct; 700 principals have stated they are concerned about this move. To my mind, one of the fundamental issues with the proposed reallocation is that, on the one hand, the Department is saying to these 700 principals that it trusts their judgment when it comes to allocating their resource hours within schools and that they will do what is best for the children who are there to be educated. On the other hand, it is completely discounting the concerns those same individuals are raising with respect to the reallocation of SET hours. That makes absolutely no sense. We cannot say to a group of professional educators that we trust them while also saying we do not trust them when it comes to something else. That is wrong.

Another issue that is wrong, which has been touched on at this committee, relates to trust, not least when CDNTs are brought into the conversation.

From recollection, the Department said roughly 5% of the information was coming forward from CDNTs. The trust of parents in a system that has clearly been failed by the CDNTs will in no way be reinforced because the Department will then take on that failure and almost replicate it through the education system.

I have some very specific questions because we could speak about this for the day but unfortunately time is not on my side. The Department will say that currently there are 14,600 special education teacher, SET, staff in the system. That is based on the 2024-25 enrolment. However, that enrolment figure is compared to 2013 or 2014, the number of students in our schools, both mainstream and special, has actually increased by 20,000. The Department will also say that it has an advocacy forum for stakeholder engagement. Are any of the bodies represented today members of that advocacy forum? If they are, what has the engagement been through that mechanism?

I have a specific question for Dr. Brady because the issue she raised about parents making a choice to send their child to a special school is of great importance, particularly in light of the NSCE report published in January. To her mind and based on her experience of working with parents of children with Down's syndrome, what extra supports are they looking for to ensure their child can stay within a mainstream setting and not be put in that very difficult position of having to make a choice between mainstream - perhaps with their peers in their local community - or a special school that would remove them from their local community and their peers?

These are the two specific questions I have for each of the witnesses. Often what happens when we talk about special education is the terminology gets a bit confused. From the witnesses' experience, what is the difference between an SET and an SNA and the role of each of those positions? Second, what does a child with complex needs in the classroom actually look like? The child may be really good academically but have complex needs. What is the relationship between the two of them, and that child enjoying their education and being a full participant in their classrooms?