Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)

On special education and special schools, we are probably reinventing the wheel. Previous Ministers and departmental officials, when vocational education started in a major way back in the 1950s, were looking at capacity in communities and they turned community centres and other old buildings into schools.

The Department is looking at school buildings in the context of special education. I take the point on centralising the special education requirement. If you have to drive into a major town or a commuter belt area to get to a special school, it adds another challenge in view of the volume of traffic. Students with profound needs could face challenges in that regard.

The fundamental point relating to special schools is size. The authorities in the North of Ireland are looking at building a massive special school to accommodate 500 students. I do not think that can work. The challenges that exist in special schools in the context of the students and the teams that are there, the smaller the units are the better. Smaller units do not have the same challenges, and they can build in a very positive community within the special schools as well. It is completely outside of my area, but I did see one rural school recently where the management looked at whether it would opt to become a Gaelscoil at primary school level. The community is not within the Gaeltacht, but they have had great engagement on it. I take the point that we should not be looking at centres.

We have some element of campus education in Meath, where a primary school, post-primary school and special school are all on the same campus. Heretofore, the special school was probably located at the end of a lane or wherever there was land or a site available. There is a campus in Meath we are hoping to visit some time in early January. Children with additional needs are going in the same school gate as their peers at that location. I take the point that we do not have to have it centralised in every community. In some remote places, there are better facilities. One of the visions that we did see in Scotland related to a special school that was on a site with a post-primary school. Those schools have a shared orchard area and a shared wooded area. It is a small school with facilities being shared.

On school buses, I suppose we are actually live. I had an uncle who was the principal of a post-primary school many years ago. The school had a minibus. It was a white Hiace van. As a family, we were in the white Hiace van heading for Ballybunion at one stage.