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

I will ask again. Will the Minister of State apologise to the four schools? She attempted to name and shame them to distract from her and the Department's failures. She put wrong information into the public domain by saying that they were not engaging at all and "just ignoring correspondence" when it has been proven that this is not the case. Will she apologise to the principals, teachers and the schools? Then we can put this distraction behind us and move on in dealing with this crisis. In Dublin 24, for example, there are 17 primary schools with special education classes but in September there will be only two post-primary schools with them. In general, the ratio is two point something to one, but in Dublin 24 it is substantially worse. It is a real failure. It is good that we are dealing with the legislation on Friday, but why did the Department wait until the Dáil is about to go on holidays and it is a few months from September? Why has the Government not been proactively planning for this, which is both directing schools and providing the resources for the schools to do it?

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