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

I thank the Minister and her officials for coming in. She is always most welcome. Will the Minister provide an update on the progress of the Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill 2023. The committee completed its pre-legislative scrutiny in 2023 and survivors are anxious to know what the timeline will be.

I want to move on to the area of special educational needs. Since the amendment was made to the allocation of SET teachers, can the Minister tell me the number of review requests that have been made by schools? I spoke again to representatives from another school in the Minister's area, Caragh Lake, and they are also deeply concerned. I have a growing list of these schools and I do not believe for one second this is something the schools are imagining. In terms of previous years, will the Minister give the committee an idea of the number of reviews that were requested and the number of those reviews that resulted in an increased allocation of SET hours?

In terms of SEN placements for younger students in particular, I recently spoke to a lady who had applied to 20 schools before having a successful application for her young sons, who are twin boys. I will gladly say there have been improvements made in this area but we are still doing a huge disservice to people like Sarah and her twin sons who applied to 20 schools and who now do an hour and a half round trip to be able to get to school. In terms of data correlation from younger students in preschool, will the Minister tell the committee what that information is and how that is fed into a forward planning system for special educational places in ASD units or special classes?

As for school transport, I welcome the release of this report that has been going on for quite a number of years. Will the Minister tell the committee who carried out this review? Now that the review is complete who owns the raw data that was used for that review now that it is finished and has been published?

Is that the property of the third party or of the Department of Education?

In terms of reducing the criteria for 2024-2025 to 2 km for primary and post primary, what is the estimated number of additional students who will be able to avail of transport? What are the Department's expected benefits from the decision to rename concessionary students as non-eligible applicants?

The establishment of the working group to review and identify options for potential integration between school transport and public transport has been announced in the report. To whom is it reporting and what is the timeline on those reports? The report recognises there will be a technical working group and, as a next step, the recommendations will be presented to the steering group for its views and considerations. Will the Minister provide the committee with a timeline for those engagements?

There is also an ongoing issue around school bus escorts' pay and conditions. The committee visited the school for the deaf a number of months ago and school bus escorts were travelling from Monaghan to Cavan every day with children. There was also a bus escort travelling from Longford. Will the Minister provide an update on the review into school bus escorts' pay and conditions? Will she also provide an update on any engagements that have taken place around pay and conditions for school caretakers?

The following requires a yes or no answer. State oral examinations continue to take place outside term. Is the Department considering bringing them back into term time from next year?