Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Minister acknowledged that the absence of special needs education negatively impacts on the children and on their families. We have witnessed that in the desperate need for additional supports for children and their families evident on the media over the past few days but it is a joke to dump it all on the teachers and the special needs assistants.

All of us, every single Deputy in this House, if he or she is honest with himself or herself, will say that a large chunk of his or her time is spent advocating for children with special needs. The Ombudsman recently said that only 10% of assessments of need are fulfilled for children with intellectual disabilities within the legally stated time limit. Parents come to us all the time for help. For example, Linda in Tallaght is waiting seven years for her child with speech and language therapy needs to be seen by a speech and language therapist. Amy, a care worker in a care home, had to give up her job because there was no transport for her son to his allocated training every day. Angela waited 12 years for her house to be adapted for the wheelchair needs of her daughter. The litany of failures of this and other Governments is despicable. They have failed on dental, on optical, on hearing and on every single need for children in this society. Special children have been utterly neglected at every level but we are dumping on the teachers.

I refer to a poignant tweet from one of these very put upon parents of a special needs child. She states that teachers are not to blame and that they are being asked to risk their health for the children and their education when what the children really need is consistent occupational, physio and speech therapy and access to psychological services and respite. She states that parents such as herself have come to rely on schools to make up for the failure of wider society to provide for their children in health and welfare. She asks that we not let them shift the blame to teachers and special needs assistants, that parents such as herself have been fighting for these services in the courts for years and that this is not a new problem. That is an important statement. In light of the answers we got on the lack of special care for our special children, it makes a show of this Government.

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