Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank the Deputy for her thanks. I appreciate that. Hopefully next year will be a good year for us. It is our 20th anniversary. As the Deputy says, education complaints will consistently comprise the highest number of complaints for us. Close to 1 million children are involved in education, including early years as an education element. Most of our children are involved in education, so that is where most of the complaints will be. Plan for Places was born out of frustration over many years of us trying to deal with situations in which children were not getting access to their places. We would investigate individually and find that a school had the right to say no and that there was no space, so it could not do it. The Department of Education would say it could not force the school, so we would be left in that limbo where the parent was carrying the load for the child. As members all know, parents are applying for 20-odd schools, or however many it is. It is a ludicrous scenario. We said we would look at the system, how we used the information we have to project for school places, if it is being done properly and what the issues are.

We developed this Plan for Places last year. When we published it, there were about 300 children without spaces. In May or June, probably around this time last year, there was a huge push in the Oireachtas. Credit to everybody in the Oireachtas. They moved to change the legislation so we could push schools to take children in that situation and create school spaces. For me, that is a short-term solution. We always do a 12-month follow-up on those reports. We are in the middle of a follow-up at this point in time. I was informed that we would be told by January or February that there would be certainty that all children would have spaces for September 2024. I have never received that letter since. I am frustrated that there does not seem to be certainty yet. Plan for Places acknowledged the good work that was done in the Department in the previous two years that started to move together. The building unit and projecting team were talking to the right people. They had all the right information but from my point of view and from that of any logical-thinking person, it is known from the first day people are born with a disability that they will be going to secondary school and we should be planning for that.

The recommendations we made are that where there are black spots and gaps that we know about, those schools should be immediately resourced to provide classes. You can then move out so that every school is resourced to provide classes where necessary and you do not have to worry about getting specific resources. At this moment in time, I know there are still children without places, which is a serious flaw. I do not want to pre-empt our final review but we will be and are engaging with the Department on that. I have heard anecdotally from a number of different people that we now have places for children with autism but not for children with general disability issues who do not have autism. We are constantly creating another issue as opposed to building our schools and facilitating and resourcing our teachers and principals with enough space to deal with all the children who are coming through.

We are a nation that can forward plan for economic forecasts and for many things, but we should not be found wanting in this situation. We are talking about a couple of hundred children throughout the country who we already know are going to transition from early years through to primary school or from primary school through to secondary school.

The Deputy also mentioned school buses. As she can imagine, I cannot talk about an individual case. My guess at this point is that we need to look at whether, though I will not say "investigate", we need to engage on the criteria for school buses at this point. We have had many complaints about that sort of scenario. I have said many times that the nature of a well-running system is that it works well for over 90% of people but the flexibility is changing. In those flexibility areas, when there is flexibility for one area, somebody else looks for flexibility. That scares civil servants because it is not clean and it is not clear, but we need to allow for that flexibility to be built into the system in order that we can provide for more people who need it and so that children's right to education is not damaged. That should always be to the fore, not whether this is inside the system or not. It should be about whether the children's right is being damaged by not providing the service. I may go back and talk to my team about whether there is a case to look at those criteria.