Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I wish to read into the Official Report a letter I received from a parent yesterday. It states:

I am a parent of a four year old autistic boy who suffers from epilepsy and severe learning difficulties. He currently attends Springfield child development centre, Ballinasloe, two days per week and I would hope for him to be attending there five days per week. However, this seems not possible as we are reliant on funding from the Department of Education and Science to keep this service running.

For a number of years now, the Department of Education and Science has provided a pilot scheme for the provision of education to children aged three to six in our child development centres, including children supported in their local preschool by the early childhood services at Lower Newcastle in Galway. The child development centres involved are located at the Burren View in Galway City, Stepping Stones in Tuam, and Springfield in Ballinasloe. The funding provided by the Department towards the provision of teaching and special needs assistant hours has been very beneficial to the children involved over the last number of years.

[Management of these centres is] unable to give parents the assurance they are seeking that their children will have an educational placement for September 2009. There is quite an amount of anxiety developing among the parents involved, particularly the parents of children with autism. In former years when we had our enrolment meetings at this point of the year, we would have been able to confirm places to parents in the child development centres. If funding is not provided for this coming September 2009, we will not be in a position to enrol any new children who have applied for places in our child development centres. This will mean that these children will be without any educational placement for September 2009 and children currently enrolled will have to have their time cut back. The children who will be affected present with autism, severe learning disability and physical disability, and the multidisciplinary staff who have assessed these children have recommended the child development centre placements for them, particularly in the absence of other appropriate educational placements. [It is all about these children having no place else to attend].

Coupled with the above difficulties is the fact that we have a number of staff at each of the locations involved, whose employment was dependent on the provision of the funding each year from the Depart of Education and Science.

The five professionals will lose their posts at the end of September because of these cuts. I fervently hope this parent who wrote to me, and the many others affected, will read the contributions to this debate from the Ministers and Government Deputies. Their contributions were nothing short of outrageous. I am sure they will get an answer from the people on the doorsteps.

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