Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

There will be engagement between the Department of Health, the Minister for Health, the HSE and CORU because there is an issue around recognition of qualifications for those who travel from overseas, even from the United Kingdom and within the European Union. It takes too long, given therapists are crucial. In other professions such as medicine it happens much more quickly in terms of mutual qualifications. There seems to be an issue in the therapy grades. I am concerned about that. We need to engage with CORU to get a proper understanding of that and see if the approval process can be accelerated.

Deputy Coppinger raised the issue of school places, along with a number of other Deputies. Huge efforts are being made. There has been a huge expansion of special education. Before the year is out, I think more than 11 special schools will have been established in the past three or four years. Five are being established this year. There are a lot more special classes - close to 400 special classes have been sanctioned. There are some issues. It should not take two years for a modular build. I do not understand that. The whole idea of modular is to do it faster. I was at the company recently that did the new Lucan Educate Together school, which is all modular. It is completed and it is a fine building. It involved modern methods of construction. The timeline could be late autumn for some of the sanctioned buildings to be provided. If Deputy McGuinness sends me the list of schools in Waterford, I will follow through with answers in respect of each case. He said some were at design stage. I cannot follow every individual process but we, including the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, are sparing no effort on the special education front. We have a record number of special needs assistants - there are more than 22,000 SNAs in our system. We will work with other countries in the European Union such as Finland to look at best practice across Europe in respect of disability and to examine whether more can be done with behavioural therapists.

There may be better deployment of different disciplines that would be more impactful and effective. The Minister brought proposals to Cabinet today on the common enrolment idea. There will be some trials next September. Can we bring forward the date by which parents signal their need for a place so the whole process starts much earlier in the school year and by the end of December, say, everyone will be in a much clearer position? That will not happen overnight, but we will make progress on it next autumn. That is absolutely crucial so parents have a degree of certainty and are not fighting all the time with different schools.

We still have some challenges in the Dublin area and I want to acknowledge that. We are working flat-out to see can we close that gap. We have made significant progress in the rest of the country. We have more places provided for now than people looking for places. The issue is to ensure there are not geographical gaps. That could happen. It is being worked on intensively.

On Deputy Ardagh's question about the in-school therapy service, there was a time prior to Progressing Disability Services or the CDNT issue when special schools had therapists. The Progressing Disability Services model was launched around 2013 and probably got substantial resources in 2017-18, so it has had faltering progress resource-wise. It has had huge difficulty in recruiting and retaining, notwithstanding the allocation of resources in the past few years. Before the election, we put it as part of our manifesto and it is part of the programme for Government that we would have a national in-school therapy service. That is now commencing but it will take time to bed down. We are going to start in special schools then expand it out to special classes and into mainstream. It is not designed as an alternative to the CDNT. We will need CDNTs across the country. In some parts of the country, apparently, they work. I am trying to be objective about this. My views are well-known. I am told it works in Donegal. However, we need to have proper alignment between the school teams and the CDNTs within the HSE. A multidisciplinary approach within the school setting is an optimal way to help children with additional needs. That is the aim and we are absolutely determined to achieve this in the first phase with all special schools. We will do the first half of special schools and then the next and then special classes and then mainstream. It will have a huge impact on schools as well. That will enable the CDNTs to focus on particular cases and can ease the work of therapy.

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