Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The caps and cuts in the past few years, which were imposed amid rising demand, have forced schools to spread SNA supports more thinly. In 2010, 13,000 children were accessing such supports. The number has risen to 15,000. Although the Government has maintained the funding, the Minister knows support has been thinned out because of the extra demand. A parent from Wexford wrote to me recently stating that parents have lost all faith in the involvement of the Department of Education and Skills, the NCSE and NEPS in ASD units as they regard them to be a powerful cartel working to a mutual agenda. The parents believe this agenda concerns itself with cost saving and a growing ideology that is forcing their children and families further and further to the outskirts of normal society. Reports on the extra use of isolation rooms are frightening. That children are put into these rooms unsupervised from many hours beggars belief in this day and age. Does the Minister not believe so?

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