John Dennehy (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute. Being the newest member of the Joint Committee on Education and Science, I have been learning a fair amount in recent weeks, having replaced the newly elevated Minister of State, Deputy Haughey. I am very interested in its work. I agree with Deputy Curran that everyone is in favour of forward planning and can name examples. In Ballygarvan, County Cork efforts to acquire a site for a school have been ongoing for seven years. I made the point to the Office of Public Works at the Committee of Public Accounts that we might have acquired a site on the Gaza Strip more quickly.

Special needs are a particular interest in the field of young people's education services to which I accord priority. There are a few reasons for this, one being that I chaired the Southern Health Board for several years, allowing me to see at first hand just how bad the situation was for young people with special needs. Years were spent passing the parcel between the Departments of Health and Children and Education and Science and officials' advice to successive Ministers was at all costs to avoid taking responsibility for the issue. The result was that children suffered. A very cruel and cynical approach was taken to the needs of young people and it took Mrs. O'Donoghue in 1992 and Mrs. Sinnott a few years later to force the State to accept responsibility through the Department of Education and Science.

The people mentioned created their own dynamic in education, but we still see the results of the years of indifference prior to 1992. There were no trained staff to implement court rulings in the wake of the O'Donoghue case and that situation obtained up to 1997, the baseline. Figures for staff at the time made for dismal reading. I contrast this with the current situation, with the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, overseeing the employment of over 1,500 adults in mainstream primary schools to work solely with children with special needs. I do not suggest for one moment that it is the complete picture. We need more, with back-up, psychologists' reports and so on. However, much has happened in a short time that should be lauded. In second level education there are now nearly 1,900 such staff, compared with fewer than 298 supplying such services previously.

Those are aspects of a programme about which I am concerned. One concern is that I understood when this was dealt with in the past two years that everyone, including unions and teachers, had agreed on according priority to special needs. I may have been mistaken in believing the target was to be met. Friends, including union activists, tell me that the development was to happen in parallel with the lowering of the teacher-pupil ratio. I worry about the entire concept in that regard.

Last night I heard a speaker say the Minister would trot out statistics for special needs education. Why should she not do so? They should be given repeatedly and we should highlight the issues involved until we have met needs. It was bad to hear someone suggest they would be trotted out as a cover. I am proud of what has been achieved on this Minister's watch and hope it will continue.

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