Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)

Most of the 30 mild general learning schools have worked extremely well with the National Council for Special Education over the past while to broaden their profile and to accept students with autism and more complex educational needs. Both the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and I have worked extraordinarily hard over the past number of months on making sure that we have a place for every child in September. That is a fundamental issue. We are trying to make sure that it is done early every year but in some of the information that we correlated over the past while, where there were some vacancies in some schools and children were travelling long distances away from those communities, if we are genuinely serious about making sure we have inclusivity, we have to tackle those issues and go under the bonnet to see what the challenges are and how we can make it more inclusive. I take the point on it but it is important we utilise every space available to make sure we have the most appropriate place for children. The schools have engaged. We will continue to engage with the stakeholders because we need everybody on board in relation to these projects.

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