Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

—recognising the frustration of parents of those children whose needs are not being met because long-promised resources are not in place;

—questioning the fairness and appropriateness of a system which removes individual assessment, critical for the identification of individual needs, and which off-loads responsibilities from the Minister to the school principal in making key decisions as to which child receives assistance; and

—aware that timely and appropriate assistance to children will help them reach their full educational potential and concerned that neglect of specific educational needs of some children will hamper their development;

calls on the Government to:

—allocate sufficient resources for the provision of special needs assistants and resource teaching hours, when and where they are needed, so that children are given the help they require;

—implement the provisions of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act immediately, so that parents, psychologists and other key support personnel can be involved in drawing up the appropriate education plans to meet the specific educational needs of children; and

—immediately sanction the resources needed to clear the backlog in assessing applications for special educational resources, state clearly how long it will take to clear this backlog and reallocate internal departmental resources to the special needs section so that they can deal properly with applications and queries from schools and parents.

Let me begin with the simple statement that all children are not the same, but they are all equal. The first part of this statement, that all children are not the same, is a simple fact which would be impossible to refute. Like adults, children have different personalities, different strengths and weaknesses, and different capabilities. We should celebrate and encourage the differences between people and the rich diversity this brings to everyday life.

The second part of this statement, that all children are equal, should be a fact but it is still only an aspiration. The Government has shown, time and again, that it will not make this aspiration a reality in any meaningful way. In classrooms throughout Ireland some children are given the assistance they need to learn and develop while for other children the position is very different. They are left to struggle with the learning process, without the resource teaching hours or special needs assistants they need. Their individual difficulties are not prioritised, their needs are not met and their plight is ignored. That is a gross inequality in the education system and puts to shame many of the high-minded notions of the Government that the State cherishes all children equally. It does not, and it is failing in its responsibilities every day.

There is a basic principle that must be accepted and it is that every child has an educational potential. It is this potential that is being squandered by the Government when it fails to provide the educational assistance children need to grow, learn and develop. This principle was recognised in the report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities, which stated clearly that every child is educable. The commission reaffirmed the right of every child to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. It clearly recognised the responsibility of the State to provide sufficient resources to ensure that pre-school children and children of school-going age have an education appropriate to their needs in the best possible environment.

This is a responsibility the Government is failing to meet. Recently the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin described the provisions being made for children with special needs as "inadequate to the point of becoming a national disgrace". In an address last week he stated that Ireland could not claim to be either a caring or an economically successful society unless we were prepared to address very seriously the provision of proper support for children with special needs. I agree with this statement and ask whether the Minister agrees.

As a wealthy State we have in our power to significantly improve supports for children with special educational requirements. Whether it be through the provision of additional resource teaching hours, special needs assistants, specific teaching aids or specialised computer equipment, children with special educational needs should have their needs met. The potential benefits to these children from this type of increased support, both now and in later life, are too great to allow the current situation to continue.

Fine Gael research shows that children who need to see an educational psychologist must wait on average six and a half months before getting an appointment. In more than a quarter of cases they must wait more than nine months. During a survey of schools that I carried out earlier this year the principal of a school for children with special needs told me that some of her pupils had not been assessed for eight to ten years. This is without doubt a national disgrace and cannot be allowed to continue.

Determining the individual needs of a child will very often require an individual psychological assessment and extensive consultation. This is recognised by the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act. This legislation, only enacted during the summer, specifically notes that children with special needs will require an education plan, drawn up after broad consultation with parents and educational professionals.

Section 4 of the Act makes a commitment that an assessment of a child should include "an evaluation and statement of the nature and extent of the child's disability" and should also include "matters that affect the child overall as an individual". Section 3 of the Act relates to the preparation of education plans to meet the needs of children, and does so in a consultative way that includes the children's parents, teachers and so on. However, against the backdrop of this recently passed legislation the Government has decided to apply a new system to the allocation of special needs resources. This weighted system judges schools according to their size, the sex of their pupils and their status. The resources appear to be allocated in a way that considers everything except the specific needs of the child.

Today a school in County Meath contacted me. There are 18 children in the school who are described as "high incidence disability". They have been assessed and require special education teaching. Under the new system, the school gets a total of 11.5 hours per week to divide between them, giving 38 minutes per child. It has been told it must recluster and those 18 children are now entitled to only 22 minutes of special education teaching per week each. We must be realistic. It is useless, pointless and pathetic to give a child 22 minutes of special education teaching per week. They might as well not have it.

What is the point in accessing psychologists' reports if they are undermined and ignored whenever it is effective, perhaps economically, for the Department to do so? I am not sure what criteria are used. What does one say to the parents of Gavin, a dyslexic child, nearing the end of his primary education? His psychologist recommends two and a half hours resource teaching per week and intensive training, but all he gets is ten measly minutes per week, which includes time spent moving his classroom to the prefabricated building and returning to his classroom. That is all he gets per week, and Gavin is but one example of many such cases.

I telephoned the Department of Education and Science in August — I accept there was another Minister there at the time — and was told that it was dealing with junior infants at the moment and that everyone else would be sorted out in September. Neither group has yet been sorted out. Last Friday I mentioned this to the parents of a boy who finished junior infants last June. They suggested that if they kept him in junior infants this year he might have a chance of getting help this year. He has profound speech and language problems as well as behavioural and social problems. He got half of the recommended resource hours and no special needs assistant despite the fact that one was recommended. His parents say he is not improving and he is beginning to notice the difference, which is setting him back further. He is on a waiting list for a place in a school with a special language class.

I could stay here all night, as could many of my colleagues or the Minister's colleagues on the noticeably empty benches opposite, giving examples of children and parents who are effectively victims of this system. The reason Fine Gael is calling for the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act to be prioritised immediately is so that consultation and consideration can be brought back to the heart of the decision making processes that impact upon the education of children. Specific needs require specific supports. Parents deserve to be consulted, as do teachers and school principals. Children should be assessed and the total package designed for the education of children with special educational requirements should be holistic, broad, fair and achievable. All resources that are allocated to children with special needs are welcome, but I have deep concerns about allocating resources in a blanket manner, with little attention to specific and individual requirements.

Failing to recognise and provide for the specific needs of children is in direct contravention of the legislation that governs the actions of every Minister with responsibility for education. In addition to the responsibilities under the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, the Education Act 1998 states very clearly that it is the responsibility of the Minister to "ensure ... that there is made available to every person in the State, including a person with a disability or a special education need, support services and a level and quality of education appropriate to meeting the needs and abilities of that person."

Not only is the Minister failing in that responsibility, she is further failing to keep parents and teachers informed about the process through which her Department awards additional resources. In recent weeks, letters have been sent from the Department of Education and Science instructing school principals not to telephone the Department with questions regarding special educational needs but to put such queries in writing instead. This policy is simply creating an additional layer of bureaucracy and adding further delays to the already long drawn-out process of allocating urgently required special needs resources.

Many parents and principals throughout the country have contacted me and my colleagues to express their anger and sheer frustration at the difficulty they have in contacting the Department of Education and Science to find out if special needs assistants are to be allocated to their schools. To compound matters, I recently requested information on behalf of several children with special needs, but the only response I received was a number of near-identical standardised letters. Regardless of the question I asked I received the same one-paragraph response. With the exception of a reference to the individual child the letters were identical. It is a sad and sorry day when that is all we can show parents who consult us about their children. These responses provide nothing more than general information. They do not answer specific queries relating to a child's application for assistance. They cause even more anxiety among an already frustrated group of parents who have been let down by the Government. In sending out these standardised responses, the Government is choosing to hide behind the new weighted system for the allocation of resources for special needs. Giving this general information and placing the responsibility on the school principal to decide which child should get assistance is utterly unhelpful.

Asking schools not to call with queries about the resources their pupils need and sending out useless responses to parents who have valid and important queries about the needs of their children shows that the Government is closing down communication on special needs. It is of paramount importance that parents are kept informed about key aspects of their children's education. This includes applications made for resource teaching hours and special needs assistants. These provisions, in which many Members put much faith, were enshrined in the Act. The Minister must allocate more internal resources to ensure that those overworked officials in the busy Department section dealing with these applications can give information to principals, schools and parents in a speedy and more efficient manner. I do not wish to be unduly critical of those officials as they are doing their best. However, they work under stressful conditions, dealing with a large array of applications. Insufficient staff numbers only compound the problem.

There is an anomaly with regard to the capitation levels that are given to children with special educational needs. When a child is enrolled in a school for children with special needs or in a special class in an ordinary national school, the school receives a higher annual capitation assistance rate than a child attending ordinary level classes. For example, a special national school will receive €376.64 per annum for a child under 12 years with a mild general learning disability. If the child transfers to an ordinary national school, which the parents and teachers may desire, the school will receive only €118.22 per child per annum even though the child will have more requirements in such an environment. It can be argued that he or she will have extra resources such as a special needs assistant. However, very often he or she will be in a larger class. Cutting the capitation grant in such cases is wrong and does not reflect the needs of the child.

See this speech in context