Eileen Flynn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Dr. O'Leary and Ms Moran are very welcome to the committee this evening. It has been mind-blowing to listen to their remarks and read some of the documents.

Yesterday, the Ombudsman for Children launched a report that talks about access for children into education. One of our biggest worries is children with additional needs accessing education. It is absolutely remarkable that we are still seeing that these days in Ireland. People can have all the assessments in the world and be diagnosed. I welcome the Minister's announcement today about people being able to get a diagnosis from the private sector and get back the money. That is very welcome. Being diagnosed is one thing but people need follow-up treatment and support in preschool and primary school. I know we are trying to be positive, and even in the research to look at the positive. However, the negative outweighs it for children with disabilities within this country.

As a sitting politician with responsibility for policy and legislation for children with disabilities and additional needs, I do not know who to go to. I am talking about children of nearly five years of age. I am trying to suss it out today to ask where this report lies. The Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is looking at it in July, which I welcome. That committee should look at it. We as a committee need to look at it too. This is about access to special schools and special classes for children with additional needs. We just do not have enough of them. I believe anybody would agree. I would imagine it is the same for both of our guests as it was for me when I did caring for people with special additional needs in Ballyfermot college. I know it is different - a special needs assistant, SNA, is obviously different from a speech and language therapist. There are different roles for carers working with children and people with disabilities, but people go into it because they give a damn and because they care and want to work with people with additional needs. We do not go into these professions saying that we want to go to Australia or New Zealand. Unfortunately, people who work in the sector are not valued. They are paid absolute buttons and work maybe 15- or 16-hour shifts. How is that sustainable?

I do not really have questions because the rest of them have been touched on and it is quarter past seven on a Wednesday evening. We have moved disability from health to more of a social model. I want it to be in a social model from speaking with people with disabilities on the ground and with organisations as well. That is what people want. It is what parents want, etc. We have heard that numerous times at this committee. Again, however, it is about who has the responsibility. The Ombudsman's report was launched yesterday. I sit on the Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. I brought that report to the education committee and I was told - not by the education committee but by people I work with - that it would be for the Joint Committee on Disability Matters and now it is with the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. We have too many Ministers and not enough action. I have said this numerous times. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth will say it lies with the Department with responsibility for people with disabilities, and that Department will tell us to go to the Department of Education. Therefore, we really are failing children. Do not get me wrong; I know we have come a long way as a society in the last 30 years and even in the last ten years with regard to people with disabilities and additional needs. However, when I hear the word "disabled", we disable people; society does that. The State is one of the biggest problems. That report yesterday was absolutely daunting for me to read through and ask how this is happening and why no one is going to take responsibility for this.

Moving from the social model, what is our way forward? I do not have a question as such. I am just giving remarks really because I do not know the answers. We could sit here until Christmas and talk about what we need to do. There is a lot of research, which I obviously welcome. We can have research the length and breadth of this room, but unless we implement the recommendations, the research is not worth a light. It is really about that implementation. How do we implement what we already have instead of recreating the wheel? How will we be able to make a decision to say it is actually the Minister for Education who has the responsibility for access to education and not the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte? How do we do that? How do we decide and say we know where we are going? There are too many fingers in pies. We are perhaps trying to achieve too much and getting very little done. We are going to be in the same place - we have this every single year - where we know there are numerous children who are being denied places in education in primary and secondary schools. I would love to know how we deal with that problem with the Department of Education. It is not a problem with people with disabilities.