Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, for taking this matter. It impacts on the constituency we share, so I thought it would be good and appropriate to raise it with her. I have been contacted by a parent who is worried about her child’s special language class and is concerned it will not go ahead next year. As the Minister of State will be well aware, this is a fantastic class for children in the area. This child was supposed to attend it for two years but it now looks as though it will be cut in the middle of its first year. The parent has been advised that, instead, the child will be put into the community caseload, which realistically means they will get speech and language therapy for 40 minutes a week for about 25 weeks of the year, when everything is now being done through speech and language therapy. Obviously, this is an issue of great concern for parents who are impacted. Some parents are travelling more than 20 km to get to the school to be able to avail of this class, which will have an impact on being able to avail of the school bus and so on if the matter does not come to a conclusion in the short term. The parent is especially concerned that the further this goes into the summer months, the longer it will take to get some kind of a resolution, given the nature of things is that as we come into the summer months, more people will be on leave and so on.

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