Mr. Adam Harris:

I will start by answering Deputy Ó Murchú. We heard about the Department saying there was consultation; we understand there were 40 consultations with managing bodies and trade unions and not one with disability groups which speaks volumes about the quality of consultation and the thinking behind how we got to this point. I do not believe there is a deliberate desire to use this to force more children into special classes and schools but there is a lack of understanding of the repercussions. That is what is happening on the ground and it comes back to ambition. We want more special classes in schools because our system requires them at present but we need to have ambition that children who start their educational journey there, or who need to access it, can progress into mainstream.

That does not happen at present, and this model will not assist in that moving forward.

Our starting point has to be what the motivation was to change the model to begin with and the alternatives. It is very clear that the model was only failing because of a lack of HSE data and for no other reason. That has to be the starting point. We need to get a point where we put transparency into the model. Instead, at the moment it is not about the child's needs; rather, it is about one child's needs relative to another. What that does to relationships within schools and between families within a school is not healthy and is not in line with the UNCRPD. NEPS needs to be developed. The reality of the system is that if there are 1 million students in school, for every 5,000 students, there is one psychologist. We are only getting started and we urgently need to see improvement in that regard.