Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Who I am hoping is on his way. I will hold the time anyway until my colleague gets here; half of it is mine. I listened with some interest - I know she is not here now - to the Minister of State's backbench colleague absolutely decrying the cut her own Government made to summer provision. The irony of that is not lost on me, nor will it be lost on the parents of kids with special needs in my constituency. The woman voted for the budget and then comes in here and decries it. I would say the Minister of State is probably getting it in the neck at her parliamentary party meetings and everything else. Possibly, there are among her party's ranks some Members who are slightly more available, shall I say, than the ones in my constituency, who tend to hide from their constituents, probably for good reason. When I was preparing a few remarks for this debate, I had a look back through my diary for the past six or seven weeks at the details of the people who contacted me. I will provide a flavour of what the parents in my constituency are saying. In Skerries, the parents of a lovely daughter have just been told there is no place for her in the ASD unit in her local school. They say, "It feels utterly depressing to us as parents that this is the 12th rejection letter we have received. We feel like if our daughter cannot get a place in the school she attends, in the town where she lives, then what hope do other kids have? The system is broken". Parents living in Lusk, whose son has autism and ADHD, have done everything right. "We applied on time", they said, "with all necessary reports and application forms to the following schools: Lusk Community College, St. Joseph's Secondary School in Rush, Ardgillan Community College and Donabate Community College. Due to the numbers applying, he has been waitlisted for all four schools for their ASD unit places and does not have a suitable place. In one school alone, there were ten applications for one place". A father contacted me recently. His son will be five in June. He said, "While most parents with children the age of our son are looking forward to their child starting junior infants in September, myself and my wife are in absolute limbo and totally worn out from the amount of rejections we have had applying for an ASD class in a primary school in Fingal. Fifteen rejection letters and we are not holding our breath". Another two can be added to that. They have now had 17 rejection letters. I wanted to give the Minister of State a chance to hear directly from the parents in my constituency because they email her and they are sick of the stock responses they get. I wanted her to hear, in their words, what her policy and the Government are doing to their children.

See this speech in context