Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

How do we even know what the needs and educational needs of children are when they cannot access an assessment of need? They are entitled to an assessment of need within three months of application, and to have the resources provided within a further three months. However, children are waiting two and three years for assessments. That assessment at the outset is key. If a child does not get the assessment, diagnosis, resources and supports, the needs grow and it becomes a much bigger problem for schools, the child and the parents as the child enters education.

To give an example, parents with a two-year-old son attended my office in recent weeks. That child is non-verbal. His paediatrician says he shows all the signs of fairly severe autism. He applied for an assessment on 2 February and should have received that assessment by now. He was linked in with the CDNT but that was just a box-ticking exercise. The HSE has now told his parents that it could be two to three years before he gets the assessment. His parents are panicked about his future. If that child were to get an assessment, including an assessment of his educational needs, and a diagnosis now, he could get the services and supports that are necessary and he would be in a far better position. If he does not get those supports, his future will be impacted. There will be bigger problems for his education and those delays may define the school he attends. Early intervention is absolutely critical and we are failing disastrously at that level.

I have raised time and again the issue of young people who are trying to get qualifications, doctorates and so on, in educational and counselling psychologically but are unable to get those qualifications because of the massive fees involved. Those fees are deterring or preventing many of them from qualifying. Many young people want to work with children who have special needs but are being charged a fortune for their qualifications. It is difficult for them to qualify. There is no funding whatsoever for postgraduate degrees and doctorates in educational psychology, which is absolutely disgraceful. We give funding to clinical psychology but not to educational psychology. These are the people we need to make the assessments and provide the services and so on that will set young people up and avoid a situation where those young people's delayed development is worsened and their futures are impacted by delaying their admission to suitable schools.

The Government will say there are more SNAs than ever. However, the fact is that the numbers are rising in line with population growth. In terms of the levels of support available from SNAs and special education teachers, we are not even back to where we were before the austerity cuts of 2008 in real terms, when one looks at the proportion of SNAs and teachers available.

We are also talking about places in ASD units. I have been campaigning in support of St. Mary's Boys National School in Booterstown. There has been an identified need for an ASD unit in that area for some time. The school has been campaigning to use the parish hall as an ASD unit. The owners of the parish hall are willing to give it over for that purpose and the Government has committed to supporting its acquisition but despite all the promises, the school still does not know what is going to happen. It is pleading with the Government to make sure that acquisition goes through because it does not know if the hall will be acquired by September to provide the ASD unit that the school needs.

I will also mention Stepaside Educate Together, which has a stepping stones unit in its school but does not have enough funding to staff it properly. The failure of the Government to provide resources and staff for places has now led the Government to talk about segregating children rather than including them in the mainstream because of the lack of resources, places, supports and staff. That is simply not good enough.

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