Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

The Minister needs to tread carefully here. He is very free and easy in quoting selectively from the UN convention but he should also have regard to the provisions of Article 42 of our Constitution. As the Minister well knows, under that Article, the State must provide a primary education system that is not only free but appropriate. The clear implication of the Sinnott and O'Donoghue Supreme Court judgments requires the State to provide a form of education that meets the child's needs, so as to make that education appropriate and consistent with Article 42 of the Constitution.

The Minister's decision invites challenges to that decision in the courts. If that happens, the Minister and his Department will be on very dodgy ground. Whatever about getting or not getting legal advice, an issue which I would like the Minister to clarify before the end of the debate is why he decided to take this unilateral decision without obtaining the advice of the independent statutory agency, the National Council on Special Education, NCSE. The NCSE is tasked with advising the Minister on special education. Despite claiming that he made the decision on "educational" grounds, it has been confirmed that the Minister refused to wait for a report on special education provision currently being compiled by the NCSE and soon to be published. Where are the educational grounds for the decision? Would it not have been more sensible for the Minister to wait for the report from the NCSE before acting in the manner he did? The NCSE review is still being compiled and has not been published. The Minister must clarify what consultation he had with the NCSE prior to making his decision to cut special education classes. It seems extraordinary that in excess of 500 children can be removed from these classes without any view being expressed from the very body we charge to advise Government, in an expert manner, on this issue. There is

something very odd in that.

The Implementation report: Plan for the Phased Implementation of the EPSEN Act 2004, published by the NCSE in 2006 states that the current state of the education system cannot provide the necessary supports for inclusion. Page 95 of the report states, "The current support framework, in almost all its manifestations, is unable, at present, to provide the necessary levels of support [for inclusion]." Page 94 states, "Schools believe they are not adequately resourced to provide effective inclusion education as envisaged by the EPSEN Act." There is no doubt that failure to implement the EPSEN Act means that it is virtually impossible to provide mainstreaming options in all cases. The Government abandoned children with special needs when it abandoned the EPSEN Act in the last budget. The Minister has done so again through his decision to slash special classes from primary schools, without any educational or academic justification for the decision. Once again, the Minister knows best.

I have four straight questions for the Minister in the context of this debate that I want answered tonight. Did the Minister obtain legal advice before deciding to abolish the special classes in a context where the EPSEN Act is now on hold? Why was the NCSE not consulted and why did he take this action when he knew his Department had requested a review which had not been completed? My third question is a question asked last Friday by a principal of a school in my constituency - someone close to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's heart - namely, how many of these 128 classes did the Minister, as Minister for Education and Science, visit before taking this unilateral decision?

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