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

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion and I thank the parents who have come in and who are devoted to their children and to vindicating their children's rights. We are talking about their rights, both under Irish law to education and under the UNCRPD to equality and to be able to participate fully in society on an equal basis to every other child. The Government is failing children and parents who are at their wits' end and who are forced to come in here to have their voices heard. The Government is breaching their legal rights in a way that is potentially - this is what has parents at their wits' end with stress and anxiety - at the expense of their children's ability to fulfil their potential as human beings. That is what is at stake for parents and the Government is failing them. It is failing to provide enough teachers generally in education, enough special education teaching resources, enough special classes, enough SNAs and enough staffing in the CDNTs. One could go through the list of failures. Vulnerable children are paying the price. Parents are wracked with anxiety and stress from trying to do the best for their children, but they are up against a system that is completely dysfunctional.

This situation is incredible because we are a rich country and we have a thing called the census. I do not know whether the Government has ever heard of the census but it is a thing where you count how many people there are in the country. You know exactly how many children there are, so you can work out from the census how many children have special needs and disabilities and what resources are needed for them, and you plan for them. That is why we do the census. It is unbelievable that the Government is incapable of doing that in one of the richest countries in the world with massive budget surpluses. It cannot do the basic thing for vulnerable children.

A lovely couple visited me today with their seven-year old boy who had gone to the CDNT after eventually getting his assessment. They were told this week that their son needed an occupational therapist but that the CDNT did not have one. He, therefore, has been failed at that level. He needs that support to be able to integrate properly into the school environment. He needs a special class place but the boys school, which he is in, does not have that place, so he got a place in the girls school. However, the recommendation of the occupational therapist was that he should not be in the special class all the time and should integrate in and out. He cannot integrate in and out now because he is in the girls school rather than the boys school where he is supposed to be. That is just typical. Kids get assessments and are told they need this, that or the other. As Lankum’s lead singer discovered, if Members were reading the newspapers at the weekend, her daughter will receive the necessary services in 2028. That child has been failed like many hundreds and thousands of others. The Government has got to do better.

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