Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last June, I raised this issue with the Minister, having previously raised it when two Labour Party Ministers published legislation to provide for school admissions, which was later adopted by the Minister.

Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours in two schools in my constituency, Dublin West, which are not untypical. They are both delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS band 1. Not only do they not have the kind of special facilities Deputy Thomas Byrne referred to but when new buildings were being built or total refurbishment of existing buildings was taking place in many other schools in Dublin West, the Department provided for a special unit. Both of these schools received news recently in the reports of the special educational needs organisers, SENOs, on their allocations of special needs assistants, SNAs. There seems to be a very variable allocation in the adjudication of the SENO requirement. Both of these schools are junior schools and one had evidence on file, which was shown to me, of the applications regarding more children with special needs coming in this year. Notwithstanding that some children were transferring into the senior school on the same campus it was getting a smaller allocation, down by approximately a third on the previous year. I will be writing to the Minister in detail about this.

The issue involves one I raised last year. The Department has not clarified whether, in recognising children with special needs, it recognises behavioural disorders. The people carrying out the SENO assessments do not seem to know. Instead, principals, who have a lot do, now have extensive and elaborate forms to consider and fill in about children seeking enrolment, or already enrolled, who emerge as having a special need. There is no clarity on how the SNA is being provided.

I will not object to the Minister’s amendment on this provision but he is running into serious problems. His standard answer is that he is providing more SNAs on a countrywide basis. As we know, they are in part being allocated to the whole school via the principal but the principals are cracking under the burden of extra administration that the Minister, through the Department, has imposed on them. For instance, in one case an allocation for special needs was denied because the report referred to a potential hearing issue that the child with special needs had. As the Minister knows, being a parent, children who have special needs often have multiple problems that must be addressed and which the school has to support. Everybody has agreed that it really is the right thing, where possible, to mainstream children in their local primary school and, in particular situations, in a special unit, which has gone ahead under this Government and I am glad of that.

The test of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is very simple. Does this child require care over and above the level that a child who does not have special needs requires? If the answer is “Yes” that child’s parents will qualify for the domiciliary care allowance. I do not understand why the Department of Education and Skills has not adopted that principle. It would probably mean more parents qualifying. During my time in the then Department of Social Protection many more parents qualified, with the agreement of all the parties in this House, for the domiciliary care allowance and that was seen as positive but it is not being translated into the education system. Will the Minister explain to us how those two schools are going to function with more children with special needs in the junior school on the smaller quota of SNAs that the Department is allocating to them? The appeals process is mired in bureaucracy which has grown extraordinarily and which makes it really difficult.

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