Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

My constituency of Dublin West is one in which school provision has expanded rapidly to cater for the significant increase of recent years in the number of children at primary and secondary levels. As the Minister is aware, the practice in Dublin West has been for the Department to offer ASD units at the time of a new build or, in many instances, a substantial rebuild. The schools have been positive about this and welcomed it.

I do not know whether the Minister got the point about the cases that I raised with him. DEIS band 1 schools are often located in areas suffering multiple disadvantages and there may be issues at home for children. While not necessarily on the autism spectrum, although a number will have elements of that, some of these children will have been referred by, for example, the special needs service of Barnardos. By and large, Barnardos accepts children into a number of its facilities who have been referred to it by social workers and the like. Therefore, the level of need is verified and significant.

The Minister would have no difficulty with agreeing that when a child who has been identified as requiring significant special support moves from preschool to junior school at primary level, it is important that the school to which he or she is moving should be able to maintain that framework of support. On Friday, the Minister published notifications and a list. If people know their schools' numbers, they can see whether their DEIS band 1 schools have lost SNAs. When the Minister made his announcement about 800 extra SNAs in schools, I presumed that, simply because of the age cohort of special needs children who were moving into second level, quite a lot of that provision was properly going to secondary schools. Perhaps he will agree that, in DEIS schools, the principals face a significant educational challenge to do the best for every child.

They work hard at this in the city centre and the west of Dublin. I know many of the people who work in this arena and they are totally dedicated. I am saying to the Minister that they are finding the bureaucracy that now accompanies the new system quite difficult. In some cases, the parents who are bringing their children to primary school may also need support. This is critically important. It does not just involve the completion rate which is important for both primary and secondary schools and which has become high. It is also important that children who have a spectrum of special needs be in a position to receive a special needs assistant, SNA. I am only taking the examples from my constituency. On Friday's list schools were losing resources. Will the Minister commit to publishing, for the sake of the principals involved who have to make appeals, the criteria? The special education needs organisers, SENO, seem to be independent of the Department. They are doing it to some extent on a whole-school basis. There was much discussion of this issue some years ago when it was said this would give better outcomes. I am disturbed when it is not doing so. In the case of schools which have welcomed children with special needs, parents have approached them and they are now in a terrible quandary about what will happen in September when they will have more children than for whom they will have special needs assistants.

The Minister is talking about the autism spectrum disorder, ASD, units, many of which are extremely successful. I support expanding them more generally into other schools. I want the Minister to look at the issue and tell us if we can get the information on how SNAs are being supplied and what principals are supposed to do, having done everything to welcome children with a variety of special needs into schools. Some children may not have an ASD, but they may need help in toileting and meeting a range of other needs. However, they will not be in an ASD unit. As the Minister knows, with the resource model directed at the school in general, many children will no longer have a dedicated SNA. Instead they will have one for days or parts of days or the junior school day. It might be helpful to principals and parents to have published the basis on which the decisions are made. I was dealing with a significant number of people in distress who will appeal. I have advised them to do so. In September, if the additional resources are not forthcoming in a school that has many difficulties, having a withdrawal and a reduction of resources is incredibly difficult for the school staff who then have to manage an increased number of children and do not know why.

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