John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the commitments in the programme for Government relates to the delivery of a step change in disability services. This is a very welcome and ambitious objective. Should it come to fruition in five years' time, we would be able to reflect positively on it. This Government would leave a legacy of change in this area should it come to pass, and we all hope that it will. My professional career coincided with an era when children with diverse needs began to enrol in mainstream school settings. We saw with this the appointment of additional resource and supply teachers and the introduction of special needs assistants in schools throughout the country. We must pay tribute to the Taoiseach for the role he played in developing and introducing that system. As a result of its introduction, teachers have become great advocates for children with special educational needs. The system has extended the role of teachers beyond the classroom in advocating with service providers for their pupils and for those to whom they provide tuition. I have been fortunate in my teaching career to work with many special needs assistants. The special needs assistant has the opportunity to have the greatest impact on a child with special needs. I have seen that time and again. I welcome very much in the programme for Government commitment to continue to extend and increase the number of special needs assistants within our schools, both mainstream and special schools.

A number of people mentioned CDNTs. While we are all frustrated by the lack of services being provided through the teams at the moment, I believe there is something about the model that we should try to build upon. Of course, the model is not unidisciplinary; it provides multidisciplinary support to all the children within the team. If we can build on that model and properly resource it with the appropriate personnel we could have a successful model for the support and for the therapeutic intervention for children with special needs.

I will give some insight into how the numbers can be different across the CDNTs. In County Galway, there are six CDNTs. In one of those teams, as of last March when I asked a question at the regional health forum, there were no children waiting for initial assessments, which was very noteworthy. I sought further information as to the position and, sure enough, when I looked at the staffing cohort of the six teams ,the team that had no children waiting for initial assessments was the best staffed. It had the highest number of speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists, all the way down to social workers, preschool liaison staff and other support workers. There lies the answer.

See this speech in context