Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and appreciate the additional information he has provided to the House. As with everything, we have to rely on experts. On the issue of gender, the evidence clearly shows that is not an appropriate ground to consider. Unfortunately, the defence the Department is relying on for the second factor, relating to complex needs, is that the data being returned by the CDNT is not comprehensive. The great difficulty with that, however, is that this is not the fault of the child, the parent or the school. The Department is effectively saying it cannot rely on one arm of the State to provide it with data in a fair manner and that, therefore, it will remove the criteria for complex needs. That might be a way for the Department of Education to remove an unfairness in the system whereby a CDNT in one part of the country is getting reports and another is not, but the unfairness of the person with complex needs not getting those needs addressed remains regardless of where the child is based.

I find it hard, therefore, to see how the Department can rely on the defence that the CDNT is not returning the data in a comprehensive way as reasonable grounds for removing the criteria for complex needs. One would imagine that if one school had ten children with complex needs and another had one child with complex needs, regardless of their profile data the school with ten children with complex needs would need more SET hours. I cannot understand how the Department will apply the criteria based on the individual needs of the child. I can understand that when a formula is applied across the board, it is about distributing hours, but it is not about focusing on children’s needs. I ask the Department to reconsider how it is going to support schools that have a high level of children with complex needs.

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