Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not going to beat around the bush. I think the Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, should resign. To say that the handling of the reopening of schools has been an omnishambles would be the understatement of the year. I suppose it is still January, but given how awful this Government is, I am sure there are more fiascos en route.

The Department's press release issued earlier this week beggars belief. The attempt to pit parents against teachers, SNAs and unions is reprehensible, especially when we hear the stress and distress that parents are under, particularly those who have children with additional needs. It is a blatant attempt to deflect from the fact that the Minster has done nothing since September to plan for this except to take advantage of the goodwill of all educational staff in facilitating the under-resourced return to school while repeating ad nauseamthe fallacious mantra that schools are safe.

The Minister's statement began in an overly confrontational way when it stated that "a phased return for children with special educational needs to in-school learning on Thursday 21 January, will regrettably not be possible owing to a lack of co-operation by key staff unions in the primary sector". After blaming a lack of co-operation, the statement continued by saying there had been "unprecedented engagement with primary and special education stakeholders". The use of language such as "unprecedented engagement" about unions and service providers is quite disingenuous. The Minister is either engaging with stakeholders and looking for co-operation or she is not.

There is a bigger conversation here around students with additional needs. Teachers are not occupational therapists or speech and language therapists, they are educators. This is a larger system failure with supports, or lack thereof, in general for children with additional needs and their families or carers. The waiting lists for services are atrocious, the statutory timeframe for the HSE assessment of needs, which is supposed to be six months from referral, is constantly flouted and the process of the assessment of need has reportedly been changed by the HSE. What is the current state of the waiting lists within the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS? NEPS has been mentioned in many Department press releases and statements up to the end of last year. In November there were reports that the Department created an additional 17 NEPS posts. Were these posts filled? What support is NEPS providing to schools and teachers now? How are assessments taking place during Covid and what reviews of the service are taking place during this time?

Gov.iehas a section from NEPS on “Wellbeing advice and resources during COVID-19”. It contains PDF documents about "calming your child" and "managing stress and anxiety". The information page seems to have been published on 27 August 2020 and updated on 20 January 2021. What co-operation is there between NEPS and the HSE?

An informative Twitter thread by Irwin Gill at the start of this week laid out what needs to be done on special needs. Has the Minister read this?

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