Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We welcome the spirit of this amendment and will support it. I stated on Second Stage that we would require such a provision in this Bill in order to support it. I am not going to be churlish; I welcome it.

It is exceedingly complicated, however, and that is a worry because it seems the amendment seeks very carefully to protect the interests of the national council, the Minister, the board of management, the school and the patron. Everybody’s interests and constitutional rights are looked after, with one exception, those of the child or the children most in need of the special classes who cannot get them. This is particularly a problem at second level in some parts of the country.

The child should be at the centre of this. If the Minister were to offer one of the schools that will not take a special class a new building, he would not need any arbitration clause or appeals mechanism because the school would take it with open arms. It should be similar if the school is asked to take on a new unit. Under US federal law there is often a way for the federal government to get around its powers by saying it will give the institution money if it does something. Surely that is the way around it. We can put the funding in question for schools that do not do this, rather than having a procedure that could take seven or eight months.

I hope that if this provision is in the Bill it will send a signal to schools that the game is up and that if they are required to establish a special class for autism or any other disability, they will do it. We should never forget that special classes are only one aspect of special education. There may be other needs such as educating children in a mainstream classroom or in special schools. This is one aspect of the Bill that has been identified as a problem up and down the country. We will be examining this between now and when the Bill is brought before the Seanad to see if we can improve on it and whether it can be whittled down a bit to make it less complex and to put the child with special needs, who needs to be in a special class, at the centre of our thinking.

See this speech in context