Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this issue. Parents of neurotypical children have an expectation that their children will get a decent education. It is not an unreasonable expectation. However, it is not an expectation that parents of neurodiverse children have. One parent from the Neurodiversity - Irishtown, Ringsend and Pearse Street and Involve Autism advocacy groups told me recently that as a parent of an autistic child, getting a place in a school is a horrific struggle. Parents feel they are begging the teachers, principals and SENOs for a place. They have to pretend their children are not as autistic as they actually are in order that they have a chance of getting the school to accept their child. SENOs will not pick up the phone to parents because there is nothing they can say to them. In my view, the NCSE is dysfunctional. There has to be a way that the NCSE can gather the information it needs to ensure the resources are directed where they are needed. Currently, the NCSE does not have the information it needs, so it cannot plan. That is a major factor in this human disaster.

Every child should have an appropriate place in its community with the wraparound services it needs and deserves. We have to stop the practice of taxiing children out of their community. I have raised the issue previously. The Government is spending over €70,000 a day taxiing children with disabilities out of their community to schools a long distance away. This practice cannot be allowed to continue. I understand that a child as young as two and half is being taxied out of their community because there are not enough early intervention classes in the area. The Government has failed to plan and failed to act. As a result, it has failed our children.

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