Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Yes. The line is that the proposal is a temporary option for those who are waiting. It is a draft, etc. I get the message. Nonetheless, there is a proposal. AsIAm put a statement up on Facebook after the meeting saying that, like here, the Department had sought to assure it that no decision had been made and that the Department had listened to the concerns, but AsIAm makes the point that the current proposal - which means there is clearly still a proposal - is not something that its organisation could ever support. The Department needs to go back to the drawing board and examine how this proposal was devised.

I welcome section 37A and it needs to be used, although that is not easy to do. It has only been used twice, but the need is great. I will use the example of Dublin 24, which is part of where I represent. The situation with post-primary schools there is phenomenal. A couple of weeks ago, the Taoiseach described it to me in the Dáil as "crazy". There are 17 primary schools with a special class but only one - it will increase to two - such school at post-primary level. Generally, the ratio across the country is 2.2:1 or 2.3:1, so this area is out of whack. I was in touch with a campaigner who told me that she had a list of six families without a school place for next September. They all applied for schools across Dublin and received multiple refusal letters. That there are this many secondary schools without ASD classes is not on.

The proposal is one of putting people in special education centres as opposed to saying that they have to be educated in schools and providing the resources to ensure that happens. It cannot be a case of only getting an ASD class when a new school is built. It is great that there will be a class in every new school, but we are not building schools quickly enough to deal with the situation.

See this speech in context