Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Thirteen years after the enactment of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, several key provisions of the legislation remain unimplemented. There does not seem to be a clear policy on the entitlement of children with special educational needs to education. As the Minister knows, Ireland has been criticised by international human rights watchdogs, such as the UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, for our non-implementation of the Act.

In the previous Dáil, the programme for Government included a commitment to publish a plan on implementing the EPSEN Act, but this did not happen. Citing financial constraints, the current Government's aim is to implement some of the ideas in the Act through various policy changes on a non-statutory level.

Does the Minister agree that at present there is no road map for the policy change, which makes it nearly impossible to have a joined-up, systematic approach to the implementation of these policies, which was the whole idea of the Act in the first place?

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