Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

This upsets the balance of these other schools because for them to be effective, they need a balance and mix. The Minister should consider making regulations under section 33, which she is empowered to do under the Act.

Ultimately, we all want all young people, irrespective of their learning needs, to be able to get into schools that can cater for their needs and for all young people to have a fair chance. In order to do this, we need to ensure they can get into schools and that all schools will cater for a wide variety of needs, that the curriculum is sufficiently wide to address a wide variety of needs and that there are alternative programmes for the small number of young people who cannot or do not wish to cope in a school setting. The Labour Party suggests that there should be a social guarantee so that all young people, irrespective of whether they are in or outside school, have the opportunity to avail of education, training, employment or something appropriate to their needs. As I stated previously, if we do not do this, we will store up all kinds of problems for ourselves into the future in terms of those alienated young people who are probably the main subjects of our debate today.

We are not opposing the Bill. We welcome what the Minister is doing, but there is a lot more to do.

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