Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply but it encapsulates the difficulties that happen for many parents and children in the current system. I appreciate that people within the Department of Education and Skills and the Ministers are trying to improve the situation but it falls down in all sorts of ways throughout the country. For instance, every year in recent years, as the Minister of State knows from his constituency, there is a panic when a child cannot find a place in a school which will accept the child because it does not have a special class or does not have the resources. The child then has to go to the SENO, as the Minister of State said in his reply, who will provide support for the child. That does not happen, and very often in Dublin 15, quite a few children are left with only a part-time or an inadequate education.

From the point of view of people who want to teach children who are autistic or who are on the autism spectrum, we have to recognise this is a specialised area of teaching and that the current setup of the Teaching Council does not fully recognise this. That is part of the problem. If a principal in a primary school is allocated an ASD special class, does he or she select one of the existing staff to take that? The teacher may be intensely dedicated, may want to do the best, may have voluntarily done courses but may not be particularly qualified in the area. We have to up our game as a country in this regard because when the quality of education available to children with autism or on the autism spectrum improves, the outcomes for children and families are very good. I want to have a dialogue with the Minister of State as to how as a society we go about achieving this.

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