Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The efforts and programmes the Minister of State spoke about might make some difference. I wish that, instead of me, the parents and teachers of the children in question were here responding to what she said. They are the ones who know how the system is failing their children, despite all the efforts, promises and programmes from the Government. Like Deputy Gino Kenny said, the debates on this issue have been happening for as long as we have been in the Dáil. Every year, we find parents at their wits' end and unable to cope. They meet barrier after barrier and they and their children end up on waiting lists forever. It is one waiting list after another, whether for school admission, for assessments or for therapy appointments that often never come.

A number of parents with special needs are in the Gallery this evening. I spoke to Pamela before the debate about CHO 7, where there are nearly 6,000 people waiting for assessments to which they are legally entitled. It is absolutely critical they get those assessments as, without them, they cannot access the therapies that flow from them. From the moment the State fails a child in this way, his or her life is impacted, potentially forever. Pamela told me that between January and May, 22 assessments were done in CHO 7. It is unbelievable. Charlotte has a young daughter, Kira, who has had three assessments but will not get her first therapy appointment until 2026. Charlotte had to apply to 32 schools for her child. Rachel, who has a son with special needs and who briefs me on this issue on a regular basis, is also in the Gallery. She would say the treatment of these children is just abuse.

It is some time since the Children First guidelines were drawn up and we had a referendum on children's rights. The guidelines were very clear that if children did not get the supports and resources necessary to give them equality and to put them first - cherishing all the children equally, as was promised in the Proclamation - that failure would be a form of neglect and abuse. It is abuse and neglect by the State. People are having to go to court to vindicate their rights. Even if they do so, they still will not get the therapies their children need. A woman who spoke at the public meeting we organised in Dún Laoghaire a while ago said her daughter was first diagnosed when she was 12 or so. She is now 17 and, in all that time, she has had two therapies in the form of two meetings with an occupational therapist. It is just unbelievable.

I got a briefing from Simon Lewis, whom the Minister of State probably knows, earlier this summer. He detailed how one third of schools actually lost special education teachers this year under the new allocation model. We have heard about this problem previously but it is incredible that it is still an issue after all these years. This happened because the Department of Education did not plan for and did not resource the required provision. One of the parents who briefed us the other day - I think it was Pamela - noted that this is not rocket science. We have the CSO statistics. We know almost exactly how many children there will be coming into the education system. We know what proportion of children have disabilities and special needs. Therefore, it should be possible to have the necessary provision in place for all of them by way of school places, resources and supports. This is a country that has record budget surpluses and is overflowing with revenues. The State has so much money it literally does not know what to do with it. The Government is putting the money away in future funds and all the rest of it. In the here and now, however, 120 children do not have school places at the beginning of this school year. The State is having to pay some €70 million a year to transport children with special needs to schools in other parts of the country. This arrangement is totally unsuitable. It puts parents under massive pressure in terms of time available to see their children and the transport costs involved in attending a school that is way out of their own locality. It is incredible.

I can go through the list of schools in my area where problems are arising. Dún Laoghaire Educate Together National School lost one special education teacher this year, leaving only one still in post. The school does not have a permanent premises. It is currently operating between a community centre and another location with prefabricated classrooms. This means it needs two special education teachers but, because of the allocation model, it only has one. The school simply cannot provide the education its pupils need. Sallynoggin Killiney Educate Together National School has asked repeatedly for a second autism class. It is one of the schools that actually wants to provide another autism class; some other schools are resisting making such provision. The school is saying it can provide a second class but the Department will not approve it.

The result of this is stories like that of Aisling, who is an SNA in Dún Laoghaire Educate Together National School. She has one child with special educational needs in Monkstown Educate Together National School and another in Sallynoggin Killiney Educate Together National School. There are not sufficient places in any of these schools to accommodate both children. Aisling is affected by this at every level. There are others on the waiting list who simply cannot get into a school. At Dalkey School Project National School, only one out of four special education teacher posts is filled. At Monkstown Educate Together National School, two teachers recently left. One of them, a special education teacher, left because the commute times were too much and the cost of housing and accommodation in the area is too high. That teacher just could not stay in the job. As a result, the one remaining special education teacher now has to go into a mainstream class to cover the other teacher who left, who was a mainstream teacher, which means the children with special needs lose out altogether. It is a disaster.

This situation can and should have been planned for before it happened. We know the numbers. They do not change that much. We have failed to plan, which leads to a fire-fighting exercise of doing a bit here and a bit there. We are moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We could say the same about the CDNTs, CAMHS and the massive understaffing of these areas where we need to recruit thousands of therapists, psychologists and so on - the allied professionals - because we are so chronically understaffed and under-resourced in these areas. There is, however, no urgency in terms of recruitment or to address the issues of pay and conditions and housing or even the issue that was brought to me recently and that I did not know about, SNAs who get injured in the course of their work. They cannot work any more but they are not given any sort of financial assistance after a period, after getting injured doing their work. It is shocking.

We are supposed to be signatories to the UNCRPD, which is about equality, not that we should really need that because it is in the Proclamation that founded this country. We are failing to provide that equality. It is as simple as that. We are failing even to plan for it and we are doing so at a time when we have more resources and more wealth in this country than we have ever had before. As a result, some of our most vulnerable children are being failed and their parents are at their wits' end. It is not fair. The Government has to use the resources available to it to give the rights and equality that every single child in this country deserves, whether it is the school places, the education, the resources, the supports, the health supports, the therapies they need or housing. I have not even had time to go into the latter and how the housing crisis is impacting children with special needs in particular.

I could go on, but it is the people up in the Gallery whom the Government owes it to, as well as the many thousands out there - 100,000 waiting for therapies, thousands waiting for assessments of need, schools and teachers, SNAs and all the rest - who are under such pressure and such stress and who are so demoralised by all this. We are failing them and it has to stop.

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