Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Lowry for raising this very important issue and I know all of us from our own constituency work will have met many parents of very many children who have special educational needs. Investing in special education is the right thing to do to give those children the best possible start in life and that is the objective which all of us in this Chamber share.

It is an area which has seen a great deal of Government investment in recent years and for every four euro we now spend on education, one euro is spent on special needs and special education, which was not the case in the recent past. That is a big change and is an area in which there has been a great deal of investment. To give some numbers on that, there are now almost 3,000 special classes nationwide, of which 1,300 only opened in the past four years. That gives a sense of the significant expansion in special education which has happened in the past couple of years. We also have additional special schools, including in my own constituency but, of course, as will be the case in the run-up to the budget, we will look at all of these areas and I am sure there will be an increased allocation both for education and for special needs within that. The exact amounts will not be agreed until budget day.

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