Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is wrong that parents have to be the proactive person in securing a place for their child. I believe the State should be doing that. The National Council for Special Education should have a proactive role in identifying the demand and need, and then agreeing the proper placement for a child. That is what I believe and it was the case before the establishment of the NCSE, when inspectors used to do this. When we stopped a lot of this in the late 90s, in 1998, decisions of that Government gave an automatic entitlement to children with special needs to a pupil-teacher ratio and to placements and so forth. The system then grew very big, however. It has grown exponentially due to mainstreaming and so forth. The figures are significant and tell another story, which is that there has been huge growth in special classes, SNAs and so on. That is no consolation to the parents who are currently protesting because they do not see any light at the end of the tunnel right now. They have no chink of light in terms of what the direction of travel is for their child or where their child is going to be.

The NCSE, to be fair, has been working on this agenda of proactive engagement with parents. That is the key to the issue. The State should be saying, "We understand the needs of this child, we believe this is the best location for the child and we are going to facilitate the child being located there". That is where we will get to.

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