Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy mentioned special education. Special class enrolment has doubled in five years. We have gone from about 9,000 to 19,000. What is that saying? It is revealing the exponential growth in the number of children requiring special needs provision and services and resources have expanded accordingly, in terms of the number of classes, SNAs and special teachers and funding for extra classrooms and so on in the special needs area. Any objective person assessing what has been happening in special education, while not saying we are there yet, would have to acknowledge the very significant growth and expansion and rightly so. I am absolutely committed to this and I want to get this sorted but that will mean taking decisions which I anticipate will run into opposition here, as is the nature of politics and that is fair enough.

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