Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I wish the Minister of State a good morning and welcome him back to the disability committee. I was listening to his opening statement online. I wish his officials a good morning.

I congratulate the Minister of State on the national human rights strategy for disabled people. It was fantastic to be in attendance and to see the visual representation of the whole-of-government response with so many Ministers present. We hear "nothing about us without us", and it was fantastic to see the involvement of disabled people in putting together this strategy, and again at the launch. It seems we are walking the talk now and not just talking it, and hopefully we will deliver everything in this strategy in a timely manner.

I wish to pick up on what Senator Murphy O'Mahony said about Article 24 of the UNCRPD. We are aiming to ensure people with disabilities can access inclusive, equality-based and free primary and secondary education on an equal basis with others in the communities where they live. This is something I am struggling with, being from County Mayo. We have lots of different rural schools and we are obviously trying to open special schools where the need is but we are looking at the need as numbers. This does not really reflect back on Article 24, which refers to "communities in which they live". If you have a small rural school that is struggling to keep the numbers, it is not going to reach the need but you have principals and teachers who are willing to open a special class, be that with two or three children. It is about looking at the need as not necessarily numbers, and that we need six or eight children to open the class. If you look in Mayo, you will see many special classes in bigger towns like Castlebar rather than in rural villages. By putting the emphasis on numbers, we are going against Article 24. It would be nice to get the Minister of State's thoughts on that and on how we are going to move forward. I know many rural schools that would love to open a class to ensure children can go to school with their siblings and peers.

On the school places being at single digits, I am going to respectfully disagree in the sense that we might say somebody has a school place but if they are not in school, then they do not have a school place. I think of a school I have been engaging with deeply in the last four to five weeks. In fairness to the Minister for education, she is working with me on it.

The school has been forced to take two new children. A section 39 action is about to be taken against it. It was told it had to send out enrolment forms and get these kids in, and then it would be given resources. When the school asked what resources it would get, given that it was already under-resourced in terms of SNAs, with appeals in place, it was told it would have to get the kids in first and then it would get the SNAs. There is a plan to change that for next year, but we are now at week 3 and these two children are at home because the principal cannot safely take them into the school without knowing he is going to have SNAs.

I think of another boy who is not on the single-digit list because he is technically in school, but he is in school in a mainstream setting that is not appropriate for him. If he has to be changed, he must go home because the school does not have changing facilities for him. When he is on the playground, he is followed around because it does not have a fence high enough for him. The special school where he will hopefully be going in October is waiting on modular buildings. He is not on the Department’s list. If we take those three children that are not on the list for school places because they technically have school places, two are not in school and one is not in an appropriate place. I ask the Minister of State for his thoughts on these two issues.