Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If the Deputy is aware of any special school that has a lack of therapy services as he outlined, he should let both the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and the Department of Education know of that. I speak to Deputy Rabbitte and to the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, regularly and we have tripartite meetings on furthering the work we can do collaboratively. The Deputy is right that there has to be joined-up thinking between relevant Departments.

It is important to stress that we have an unprecedented sum of €2 billion going to special education, which is almost a fifth of the education budget and represents an increase of 50% since 2011. We now have 18,000 SNAs, which is a huge number. They are all clearly needed but it is an increase of 70% since 2011. We have about 13,650 special education teachers, an increase of 40% since 2011. There is more we need to do in terms of supports, but we are making inroads.

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