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

I will read a sentence from the programme for Government, which states "The ambition of this Government is to provide each citizen with accessible and affordable healthcare, housing, education, childcare and disability services". That ambition is not being met. The State is failing fundamentally to meet the rights of many people in this State but in particular, the rights of children with additional needs.

I will raise a particular case, which illustrates the point. Rocco is four years old. He is in junior infants. He likes going to school but he is currently only able to go to school for nine or ten hours per week because no special needs assistant, SNA, has been allocated to him. Rocco is suspected of having ADHD or ASD or both but there is no official diagnosis. He is on a long waiting list for an assessment of needs. The principal of his school applied for a minimum of four SNAs and got one. Rocco alone needs a full-time SNA, but the school got one for the entire school. The result is that the school told him it would love to have him at school full time but it cannot possibly provide for his needs. Therefore, he has been told he can only go to school for nine or ten hours per week. His right to an education is being denied. Similarly the school tried to get a psychological assessment for him through NEPS and was told that no psychologist has been allocated for the local area, so he was not able to get it.

It is absolutely scandalous that a four-year-old boy in this country is being failed in such as way by the State. What is the Government going to do about it?

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