Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have recently held a number of meetings with Down Syndrome Ireland and with parents of children with Down's syndrome. Following these discussions, I agreed to review the educational provision for children with Down's syndrome.

I have now provided for NCSE to make additional allocations of 2.5 resource teaching hours per week to schools in respect of any child with Down's syndrome currently not eligible for low incidence resource teaching hours. I will ensure that adequate teaching resources are made available to implement this decision. This will address a central concern for parents that children with Down's syndrome with a mild general learning difficulty did not have adequate support or certainty of the support they would receive under the general allocation schemes.

This measure has been introduced pending the introduction of the new special needs teacher allocation model recommended by NCSE. On the question of timing, I am not sure as yet because there is some work to be done, in particular, with regard to complex needs and the HSE is currently carrying out this work. We await the outcome of that work in order to have the full information for implementing the new model.

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