Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to speak on special needs assistants, I thank the Rural Independent Group for tabling the motion and I thank Deputy Thomas Byrne for tabling his amendment. We have to look back to 20 years ago when Deputy Micheál Martin, as Minister for Education, introduced special needs assistants in schools. I remember a time prior to that when community involvement schemes were trying to pick up an urgent need in our primary schools. The SNA scheme has developed, and people have been trained and have made an enormous contribution to young children's lives, empowering and enabling them to go on to live fuller lives in their communities. This is very important.

I look at the review and the language coming down the tracks with regard to changing the model. Many times over the past 20 years this has been examined. From the outside looking in, there seems to be an attitude in the Department that this whole system needs to be changed fundamentally. Through the way it has been developed over the past 20 years it has contributed enormously, and any review of the special needs assistant scheme must ensure the existing model is continued and expanded further to empower the special needs assistants who do marvellous work in primary and post-primary schools the length and breadth of the country.

This brings me to the issue of pathways to get resources and diagnoses, and there really needs to be a critical examination of how all of this is panning out. Some parents feel they have to get a diagnosis of special needs for their children to access the services. There has to be a simplified way of doing it and making sure that smaller primary schools have the same access as larger primary schools, and that parents can make a decision for their children to go to any smaller school.

Special needs assistants have done an enormous job. They have contributed enormously to our society over the past 20 years and we must compliment them. We must compliment school management also. In whatever review is done by the Department what has to be sacrosanct is that the best available support is made available to young children as they go through primary and post-primary schools and, at this stage, through the various preschool programmes, such as the access and inclusion model, AIM, and not dismantle what has been done. At several stages over the past 20 years there have been attempts to try to dismantle it or put the genie back into the bottle. The scheme is working. Perhaps there are resource issues, but they cannot stop how we go forward.

I thank those who tabled the motion and those who are contributing to it. Do not change the whole system. In whatever reviews are done, make sure the core remains to ensure the best possible outcomes for children.

See this speech in context