Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It seems from the Minister of State's reply that because one element of Government is making a bags of how it treats children with additional needs, the Minister of State has to take up the slack because children are languishing on waiting lists for assessment and, therefore, the Department of Education has to change its allocation model because the data is not available. It is a complete failure of the entirety of Government. It appears the Minister of State's view is that she is right and everyone else is wrong, including the INTO, AsIAm, individual parents and individual schools. Nobody has been suggesting that there have been cuts to the overall number of special education teachers. The Minister of State should not say that. We are saying that it will have a disproportionate negative effect on a number of schools. They are all pretty horrified by the change. Can we pause it or put a stop to it, have another round of collaboration, negotiation and consultation, and then revisit the issue? The Government cannot continue as is because there is a lot of hurt out there.

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