Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the review. We have been waiting for it for a while. I do not want the House to be in this position again of debating legislation from 2004 and 2005. I do not want to pass legislation that we cannot live up to, as we have done with the assessment of need process. There are timelines in the Act that the State is consistently failing to deliver. Whatever we do with this review, we need to ensure that people can avail of the resources and supports required in the area of special education, schools can deliver those supports to students and we do not find ourselves in this position again as regards the assessment of needs process, where we cannot implement the very legislation we are attempting to introduce.

I have issues with the assessment of needs process and I will use the couple of minutes I have to talk about them. The one thing that gave me a bit of optimism or cause for hope in the past few months is that, despite the legislative changes that might come down the line, we are talking about giving people access to therapies at source and that it will not be contingent on diagnosis. I hope we can continue that.

There is a requirement to expand reading classes. I taught in a school for 15 years. Why have reading classes and early intervention classes not been expanded? These could provide early intervention to students without a requirement for a full diagnosis. They need to be expanded.

We need to look at models. The Minister of State visited the Rainbow Club and will probably visit it again with me. We need to look at how it provides therapies and interventions to students of school-going age. It is not the same model as the HSE uses, the clinical model we have become accustomed to. The Rainbow Club model should be the footprint for what we do providing special education needs into the future.

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