John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I recognise the Minister of State's full commitment on this. I have engaged with him on this issue. I have heard him talk about it at parliamentary party meetings and he has shown great commitment and enthusiasm in this role. There has to be some recognition that in the space and time he has been allowed 400 special classes will be introduced from September. I am not sure if that is a record but it is certainly significant. I understand fully and I agree - and the Taoiseach says it frequently - that it is no consolation to anybody or any family that has no place for their child from September, but I know the Minister of State will continue to work in that area and, hopefully, we will continue to roll out further places in special schools and further special classes for those children who need them.

I want to confine my comments to the one service mentioned in the motion and in the countermotion, which is the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS. I recognise that there will be further evolution of NEPS with the counselling in primary schools pilot scheme over the next two years. That is to be welcomed. Traditionally, NEPS would have been solely responsible for the assessment of a pupil. Perhaps I am going back some time but in my own teaching career that is what we would have associated NEPS with. That has changed a lot and unfortunately NEPS no longer has the wherewithal, in terms of personnel, to make sure it is carrying out all assessments that are needed of children in primary schools. I believe schools would have a preference that NEPS would be the assessment authority or provide the assessment person and that parents and families would have the same preference. They would get great consolation from knowing that an assessment has been undertaken by a State service as opposed to a private psychologist. Given the volume of assessments taking place and the volume and the needs of children, I recognise it is not possible for that to be the case but we need to look at the cost of the private sector psychological assessment for the family of the child. There is a shortage of such psychologists. We are all familiar with hearing about the various scales of costs but certainly it is not cheap. It is costing families a lot of money to have that psychological assessment.

NEPS does seem to be stretched, although I say this while recognising, and in the knowledge, that NEPS has been embellished with further psychologists in the past year or two. Given the increased demand for assessments and the increased need, NEPS needs be further resourced and the number of psychologists within the service increased. I will give the Minister of State an example from my community. A NEPS psychologist was on maternity leave but unfortunately could not be replaced during that time.

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