Ms Miriam Jennings:

It is important to recognise, through our conversations with principals who are actively involved, with some doing part-time cover and so on, that we cannot keep arguing about the same thing with them. It is highly inappropriate for parents to be making contact with schools and asking them about this, which then creates this really bad atmosphere. It is not fair on any of the parties in education, parents or educators. We recognise by our study and our conversations the real challenges for them. It is really important we recognise and acknowledge also how hard it is to establish a programme in a school where there might be 70 children with complex needs. A principal is not going to choose ten of those children and say to the remaining 60 of them, "I am having a little lottery here." We need to recognise the challenges rather than having the same old arguments the whole time: "Why will you not do it?", "I do not want to do it", "I want to go on my holidays". The children are very hard to manage, but they are very hard for us to manage too. We hear the same arguments all the time. We need to bring this up a level. Let us look at the realities and find the solutions from today, based on the new research and the honest research. It will not be an easy fix, but there most certainly is a fix and we certainly have a budget. We had a budget of €40 million last year. We need to look at how we are spending that budget.