Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment my colleagues on tabling this Private Members' motion on special education.

Annually, parents of children with special needs and autism face considerable difficulty securing school places for their children. For those who are lucky enough to secure the place, I will focus on the problems some of those children might face when they enter the school system, normally at the age of four or five.

When they enter school the parents and teachers can notice quite quickly that some children may not reach a particular milestone, or that some children may need extra supports, be withdrawn, might not share and might be happier on their own. There is no doubt that we have fantastic teachers and special needs assistants, SNAs, who are trained to recognise these signs straight away. Children with ASD can struggle in mainstream, especially those without a diagnosis.

To the best of my knowledge - I am not sure about DEIS schools - normally most national schools receive funding to carry out two diagnoses per year. Recently I met the principal of a school for children with special needs. I believe he gets funding for more than that but he told me that it was like playing God. One is trying to weigh up the needs of one child against those of another. One is trying to assess whether the family may be able to go ahead and have it done privately. The principal said that he feels that he is playing God in this because he is trying to decide which child is worse and needs the assessment sooner than the other child to get the correct supports. I believe that all Members hear of many of these situations through our constituency offices.

I have received the statistics on children with special educational needs who are seeking an educational placement in a recognised school. The figures for Waterford are just four for last year, so it is one of the best counties in the country for having children placed. I do not have many people coming to me to say they cannot get their child into a specific school, but parents do say that when their child is in school and needs the assessment, they are waiting too long for it. On top of this, some parents try to borrow the money to have a private assessment done. If there is one thing we could focus on, this would be a very good one.

A school that is located as close as possible to the child with autism is very important. A child may have to travel by bus and might have a companion on the bus, but in some instances, especially in rural areas, the child might have to travel for one hour to get to the special school with the autism unit and it could be another hour home in the evening. This puts another two hours onto the day for a four or five year old. I am aware that we cannot put an autism unit in every national school in the State, but at the same time it is very important to look at geography when we are determining which schools receive these extra supports.

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