Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this question. I was in Kerry and visited a number of the special schools there in recent weeks. I visited Nano Nagle Special School in Listowel, St. Francis Special School in Beaufort and St. Ita's and St. Joseph's Primary and Post-Primary Special School in Tralee. These were very insightful visits and showed the tremendous work being done by principals, teachers, SNAs, boards of management and the wider school communities in each area.

Each of the schools demonstrated superb leadership in how they can support and deliver for children with additional needs. There was such a positive supportive environment in each of the schools and I want to put on record my appreciation for the work all of these schools are doing, which was clearly evident on our visit. It also gave me first-hand insight into the many challenges the schools can face, which we hope to address in the coming years.

Various pieces of work are under way to further enhance how we support children with additional educational needs throughout the country, including Kerry. There are four special educational needs organisers operating solely in Kerry while 44 psychologists are providing support to children in primary, post-primary and special schools throughout region 5, which covers counties Cork, Kerry and Clare.

As the Deputy will be aware, significant funding has been provided in successive budgets for a substantial increase of staffing in the NCSE and the National Educational Psychological Service. Both services are critical to students with special educational needs.

In recent years we have been steadily building on our special needs teacher and SNA posts. Budget 2025 provides for an additional 768 special education teachers and 1,600 SNA posts. This will mean that by the end of this year we will have more than 44,000 professionals dedicated to supporting children with special educational needs in our education system. To put this in perspective, there has been an increase of 22% in the number of teachers and a 32% increase in the number of SNAs since 2020.

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