Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my party colleagues for bringing this motion before the House. It seeks a firm commitment from the Government that no child with special educational needs will lose resource teaching hours as a result of changes to the allocation model. As my party's spokesperson on farming and skills, I am often contacted by parents of children with learning difficulties who are struggling to access such supports. No Deputy in the House can dispute the fact that the parents of children with learning disabilities are completely disillusioned with the webs of red tape and the extraordinary waiting times being imposed on them.

Far too many children are already being left behind and their families are the people who suffer. With a diagnosis of a learning difficulty parents are already worried sick that their children will struggle in their education for the following 13 or 14 years as they go through the primary and post-primary cycles. Early education and human development through the adolescent years can be a challenging time for even the most gifted students. For that reason we must do more to ensure urgent access to a child psychologist. That is the key to ensuring that families are supported. Currently, they feel the system is designed to work against them.

To gain access to additional resource teaching, a child must be assessed for learning difficulty by a psychologist, which can be done publicly through the National Educational Psychological Service or through a private consultant. A private assessment will cost up to €1,000, which many parents simply cannot afford. A public assessment through the National Educational Psychological Service can take up to a year, and even longer, and I have a database of representations in my office which testifies to this timeframe. Bridging this huge inequality in the first stage of the process of accessing resource teaching must be central to everything we do into the future. There is concern that instead of a child-centred approach, the new system gives an allocation of resource teaching hours to schools based on their catchment demographic and socio-economic profile. It should not be the case that a child with assessed needs is deprived of resource supports.

We cannot ignore these inequalities any longer. Parents should not be left waiting years for what is essentially the most important appointment in their child's early education, simply because they might not be as well off as others. The Government is attempting to back-track on commitments to hire additional educational psychologists, and the education action plan has delayed the recruitment process. The Government must commit to reversing such trends and to recruiting the required psychologists or the current inequalities in the system will increase to uncontrollable levels. Every child in this country has the constitutional right to equal opportunity to flourish in education. A society is judged by how it looks after its children, and especially children with special needs. We should look after them at all costs.

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