Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is an important Private Member's motion being put forward by Fianna Fáil. It caters for those children and their families who find themselves faced with the most challenges in life. Every year, I and many of my colleagues find that parents of children with special needs and with autism face considerable difficulties securing school places for their children. This has led to the establishment of campaigns such as Enough is Enough - Every Voice Counts. Such campaigns have emerged in the areas of Dublin, Cork and Limerick in response to the difficulties experienced by parents in securing school places for their children.

I have certainly found such difficulties in my constituency of Kildare South. This evening I was reading back over some of the emails I received from parents in recent years and it was absolutely heart-rending and heart-breaking. Parents are unable to find a school place in their own county, let alone within a local school. One parent referred to being offered a place 35 miles from home and that meant a round trip of 70 miles. School is an important setting for socialisation as well as for any academic experience. The whole principle of schooling locally, where children get to know their neighbours, is very important.

We know that there are close to 4,000 children awaiting assessment to get a school place. That is a high number of children awaiting such recognition. I have come across situations where children did not have the requisite diagnosis when their names were on the list for a school. Their parents were told, however, that it would not be a problem while the diagnosis was awaited. It then became a problem when the child had the diagnosis, having gone through the whole process of buying uniforms, etc. More than 850 children with special needs across the country were receiving home tuition last year because a space could not be found for them in schools. The amount paid for home tuition for these children has increased by almost a quarter in the last two years. These children and their families are being left behind.

I have raised another situation, with which I am very familiar, with the Minister before. It concerns 12 children in Newbridge who were leaving an autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit within their primary school but who did not have a place to go to at second level. Some 24 months before those children were due to leave their school we started a campaign and a lobby. Those 12 children left school in June 2018. It took until after the November break in that year to get a place within a secondary school. No home tuition whatsoever was offered during that time. Those children went for almost half a year without any type of school setting. That is absolutely wrong.

Through pressure from Fianna Fáil, the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 gives the Minister the power to compel schools to provide special classes where sufficient places are not available. So far, despite concerns raised by parents across the country, this power has only been used once and that was in Dublin 15. We believe that the Government must be far more active in its application of this power. The problems do not end when a child enters school. While Department of Education and Skills does not collect information on reduced timetables, reduced hours or exclusion, evidence from organisations such as AsIAm indicates that many schools have implemented involuntary exclusions or reduced hours for children with special needs. That is simply not good enough.

The Government must act to ensure that these children receive the education they are entitled to. It is simply not good enough to ignore the problem. Schools also must be provided with the resources to vindicate these children’s right to an education.

Going back to the experience in my constituency, quite early on in my mandate I conducted a survey of all the schools in the area, especially homing in on this specific situation. I was quite shocked by the results of that survey. It is very important that children of schoolgoing age can get a place in a school close to them or where their siblings attend. Some 15 years on from the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act 2004, progress has been made with resources and a greater knowledge of what is required in schools for all children, including those on the autism spectrum. I believe this knowledge is being whittled away year on year without the reduction in class sizes, with yo-yoing entitlement of schools to special needs assistants, and with no increase on ASD classes, when quite obviously the demand far exceeds the supply.

The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, has spoken about a range of placement options and supports for children that have enrolled as pupils with ASD, but what about the options for children who cannot enrol? What is their option? Is it to wait until next year? Will there be a place then? How long should a child have to wait until a place becomes available? From speaking to parents and schools, I have found that quite often they have to wait until another pupil leaves the ASD unit. Nobody knows, however, when that is going to happen.

Professor Louise Gallagher, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, has said: "We are running to stand still and I would worry that we are over relying on medication rather than being able to give them the full suite of services." Professor Gallagher has pointed out that a diagnosis of autism should be getting a child the required services, but in some cases it is actually shutting a child out of services. The lack of intervention with any diagnosed condition compounds the situation.

It is very difficult for parents to face a future for their child that they had not imagined. Sometimes cases are not presented until it is too late and behaviours can become entrenched. Interventions are always going to be more difficult, and we all acknowledge the importance of early intervention. Already parents of children with autism face a journey of having to fight for their children every step of their academic life. A place in a school in their environment must be a basic requirement.

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