Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the publication of this report. However, there is nothing new in it and without political will to implement its recommendations, it will be another report that is left to sit on the shelf. The fact is that the issues and shortcomings in the provision of education for pupils with special educational needs have been identified in the past, and spoken about in this House on numerous occasions. We now need to see implementation of the solutions. This review must be more than a box-ticking exercise. It must place the rights of children with special educational needs at the very heart of our education system. Children are not statistics; they are our future, and every child, no matter his or her ability, deserves the same opportunity to thrive, to learn and to be respected.

The 2004 Act was supposed to guarantee access to assessments and supports tailored to each child's needs, but across this State, parents are battling for months, sometimes years, just to get the basic supports. Teachers are stretched beyond capacity and are frequently utilised to replace missing teachers in other classes.

Let us talk about rural communities. The Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, visited County Clare. I visited rural schools there with him. Rural Ireland is always an afterthought. I am aware of a case where a whole family moved from another county to rural County Clare in order to access barely adequate services for their child. They are now facing longer waiting lists and further distances to specialist services, as they live in west Clare and all the services seem to be centralised. This is two-tier education and a postcode lottery. That is not acceptable.

Sinn Féin believes in a fully resourced, inclusive education system, rooted in fairness and equality. This means the right to timely assessment, delivering real supports in the classroom, and properly funding special education. It also means expanding teacher training, supporting SNAs and ensuring rural schools are not left out of the conversation.

The assessment backlogs must also be addressed as a matter of urgency. I have raised this before, both in this House and in parliamentary questions, and the answers I received have been wholly inadequate. The findings of the focus groups in this report clearly indicate there is a lack of appropriate school facilities. They also show that children are not treated as individuals and provided with the specific services they require, but instead are forced into a one-size-fits-all system.

Parents also say they are very worried about the lack of facilities for their children when they grow up and leave school. For parents, every step of the process is a struggle, one that they should not have to go through. The fact is that children and their parents are all too often ignored, yet these are the very people at the coalface every day whose insights and inputs should be considered essential. Given that every step of this process is a struggle for parents, we must ensure there is a serious change of ethos.

We have an opportunity to build a system that reflects our values, where no child is left behind, where education is a right and where rural communities like those in County Clare are given the support they deserve. Let us not waste it.

See this speech in context