James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to the Deputy's ongoing advocacy for the special education sector and special educational needs resources. He has been a strong advocate for that over the last term. I am taking this question on behalf of the Minister for Education. I will outline on behalf of the Minister how the Department and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, continue to support children with special educational needs.

I stress that enabling students with additional needs to receive an education appropriate to their needs is an ongoing priority for this Government. It is a priority to ensure all children have an appropriate school placement and that the necessary supports are provided to our schools to cater for children with special educational needs.

In 2024, the Department will spend more than €2.7 billion on special education and further progress will be made in 2025 as an additional €159 million has been dedicated to providing supports for children with special educational needs. That is almost a €3 billion budget overall for the coming year. In fact, over a quarter of the entire education budget has been dedicated to special education in recent years. The main supports this funding provides are special classes, SNAs and special education teachers. The NCSE has advised there are 3,336 special classes in operation nationwide for this school year. These classes can provide for in excess of 21,000 students. Four hundred and nine of these are new for the current school year: 289 at primary and 120 at post-primary level.

The NCSE has responsibility for co-ordinating and advising on the education provision for children with special educational needs nationwide. Over recent years, the Department and the NCSE have introduced a number of strategic initiatives to plan for and provide sufficient mainstream, special class and special school places. These initiatives are now bearing fruit, with more than 1,300 new special classes sanctioned and seven new special schools established over the past four years. The Department engages intensively with the NCSE on forward planning for new special classes and additional special school places. This forward planning work is well under way ahead of the 2025-2026 school year. The work involves a detailed review of statistical data relating to forecasting demand for special class places, an analysis of available school accommodation, consideration of improved data-sharing arrangements and a focus on the provision of special classes at post-primary level.

Regarding the school referred to by the Deputy, I confirm that the Department received an application in 2021 under the additional schools accommodation scheme. The application was for funding for the provision of three special education classrooms. The Department’s school building technical team carried out an in-depth review of the school site in 2021. The review confirmed that the school and the site are at maximum capacity and that it would not be possible to provide the required accommodation on the site unless vast amounts of existing accommodation were to be demolished and replaced with two-storey accommodation. At that time, considering all the relevant impediments to delivering the brief of accommodation and the site constraints, the Department was not in a position to provide funding for the significant demolition of the school building. In light of this, officials in the Department contacted the NCSE to advise them of same and to establish the special classes in other schools in the area.

In January 2024, the NCSE confirmed the need for special classes in the area. The NCSE and Department are working to identify suitable locations for those classes to ensure the children who require access to this provision can avail of it as soon as possible. Separately, the board of management of the school subsequently submitted a new engineer's condition report to the Department in support of its proposal to knock and rebuild a portion of the school building. In view of the reconfirmed sanction by the NCSE, the cost of the modular for special education tuition and the engineer's condition report, the Department's technical team agreed to review the contents of the report. However, following consultation between the Department and NCSE on SEN provision in the school planning area, the NCSE is undertaking a review of the SEN provision requirements in the wider area, and this will be a key factor in the decision.

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