Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister and the Minister of State on their appointments. I know the Minister of State on a personal level. He is hard-working and a man of integrity for the constituents of Cork North-West. I am sure that will be the same in his new role in the Department. I congratulate him.

I welcome this motion from Sinn Féin and the opportunity to raise the issues and concerns relating to special education. The Labour Party will support the motion. When it comes to special educational needs, we have a cohort of students throughout the entire country who do not have the same access to education as their friends, neighbours, siblings and members of their own family. For parents in Ireland whose children have additional needs, it is more than likely the case that they are travelling long distances in the morning and afternoon to get to and from school. That begs the question of how to integrate children with additional needs into their communities, which is the best possible thing we can do for those children. If a child has to travel an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to go to and from school, it is not possible to integrate that child into their community. It is just not possible. I have serious difficulty with that, as do many parents throughout the country. I have great empathy and sympathy with those parents and children.

In the recent general election campaign, my party campaigned on an autism guarantee to secure an appropriate school place for every child and develop a fully inclusive model of education that vindicates the right to education for all children across a range of disabilities, and complies with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. To realise this means better long-term planning, multi-annual funding, and an overhaul of the EPSEN Act. It also means the use of ministerial power because that is something I cannot get out of my head. As a secondary school teacher for the past two years, and as someone who came out of school five years ago, I could never understand how Ministers never used their power to give our schools the opportunity to facilitate children with additional needs in their own localities. It is almost as if the Minister has no power in the Department. I call on the Minister and the Minister of State to take that power and give those children that opportunity.

One parent in my constituency of Cork North-Central has applied to ten different schools. I am putting this on the record of the Dáil again, but it is no harm to do so. She is second on the waiting list for the tenth school. She received the opportunity of going to a school, after applying, that is nearly an hour and a half away from her home. She said to me on the phone the other day that she feels absolutely obliged to take the place. That should not be the case in the country we live in. When I spoke to her on the phone, I genuinely felt such sympathy and empathy towards her feeling obliged to take the place. She has never even seen the school or heard of it but felt obliged to take the place. That is just completely unacceptable.

Schools have been losing out. Disability advocacy organisations and DPOs must be part of the process when developing new policy initiatives. It is essential that we get the people who are working in the field to be part of the policy initiatives we want to change. It is very simple. We need to see an expansion of the educational therapy support service through the NCSE, more in-school therapists and the provision of better training for teachers during their teaching degree. I did four years in Mary Immaculate College to train as a secondary school teacher. I got little or no training in special educational needs. That is where we need to begin it. If somebody goes to college for four years to train to be a secondary school teacher - this is nothing on the college and I am a proud graduate from Mary Immaculate College - we need to start there. If we are to train teachers and fully equip them to deal with children with additional needs, we need to start with teachers who are in training. It is as simple as that. The Department has to realise that.

We need to see investment in child-centred SNA provision. We need to value SNAs throughout the country. I am privileged to say that I worked with countless SNAs who go completely unnoticed in the work they do in this country. We should get rid of the 72-hour obligation and provide training to the QQI level 6 equivalent. We need to undertake an autism audit of all schools and provide autism CPD training to school staff to ensure that mainstream schools can facilitate the inclusion of autistic children to the greatest extent possible.

Ireland has ratified the optional protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities but children's disability network teams remain underfunded and understaffed.

The Government's own disability services action plan stated 180 new CDNT posts and 300 therapy assistants were essential in 2025 to progress the disability services programme to meet the commitments in the roadmap for disability service improvements for children and young people.

We are acutely aware that over 10,000 children are waiting for an assessment of need, and tens of thousands of children are waiting for essential therapies. This is unacceptable. The delays are having genuine knock-on effects on children going into education. If by the age of eight, nine, ten or 11, children have not received a proper assessment or the proper therapies they so badly needed in early-years education, including junior and senior infants, it is a significant issue. They may be in secondary school before they receive them. It is just not good enough. Let me give an example. In 2016, phase 2 of a development at Scoil Oilibhéir, Dublin Hill, in the constituency of Cork North-Central, which I represent, was given the opportunity to progress in the Department of Education. Not a single block has been laid. That school, a special school in Cork city, has been let down. Additional accommodation in existing schools, be they mainstream or special, is absolutely necessary. I am disappointed that the Department has failed schools and children across the country in this way. The accommodation is not forthcoming.

Therapy is not an optional extra; it is essential to the development and well-being of children with additional needs. The State is failing the affected children. Enacting meaningful change is the only way forward.

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