Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To be fair, on any balanced, objective assessment there has been very substantial investment in special needs education in this country over the past 20 years. In particular mainstreaming special needs education started in the late 1990s through the provision of a pupil-teacher ratio for children with autism. That started in 1998. SNA provision was implemented and now has many thousands of workers. This year there was an increase of 10% over last year. The legislative template as enshrined in the EPSEN Act was not fully commenced over the years by different Governments. I have views on that myself. While that did not happen on the legislative front, it is not fair to say that in the educational world substantial progress was not made; there was. There needs to be more and the Government is taking steps with further legislation, for example, on school admissions and so on.

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