Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, for all they are doing to try to move the dial for disability matters and children with additional needs. Fifty-one recommendations have come out of the review of 2004 EPSEN Act. Two decades ago, the Act set out ambitiously to ensure equal access to an education system that would recognise the potential and rights of our children with additional needs. We must acknowledge that many improvements have been made in those two decades, including an increase in the number of special needs assistants, SNAs, and positive changes in how they are allocated, as well as other resources.

We must also acknowledge the increase in special education teaching hours and an increase in special classes from only 400 in 2010 to 3,400 in 2024. I also acknowledge and look forward to the roll-out of a return to schools of therapists, such as speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and behaviour support specialists, not as HSE staff but as staff of the Department of Education. We are starting with 90 therapists in 45 schools, and I hope they are rolled out in a meaningful way whereby they are actively in classrooms for a period of a day, rather than just being set aside for one-to-one therapies. They can help with what is happening at circle time, physical education, PE, time and academic time by looking at the whole classroom approach rather than just being involved in one-to-one sessions.

We must also consider the fact that sections 3 to 12, inclusive, of the Act were not commenced. They would have seen a legal requirement for individual education plans, IEPs. As a behavioural consultant who worked in the area for 19 years, I understand why we now need a shift to student support plans that are responsive and dynamic, rather than prescriptive and inflexible. Over the past two decades, we have seen some schools carry out IEPs excellently. For other schools, they have sometimes been a tick-the-box exercise. IEPs, when handed over from one teacher to another or one school to another, can be a good roadmap to show what the student has achieved. Sometimes IEPs are not reflective of what was happening on the ground and are just nice documents. We must ensure that student support plans are child-centred rather than bureaucratically centred. All of our children deserve a positive learning experience and an opportunity to realise their full potential when they go to school.

I want to consider some of the recommendations. There was reference to an inclusive environment for our children. What does that really mean? It means that they are able to move flexibly between settings. Killeen National School outside Louisburgh does this very well. It is a small rural school. I worked with one particular kid and from the get-go when he joined the special class, he was included in art, lunchtime and PE. The curriculum may have had to be completely adapted for him, but he stayed with his peers all the way up and graduated from the school this year. It means that those children are invited to birthday parties and are played with at lunchtime. "Inclusive" must mean that children are included. It does not just mean that support is on offer beside the school or in the same school. It is about interweaving support through all activities.

We must also look at changing the ratios for approving new special classrooms or autism classrooms. I know the ratio was reduced from eight teachers to six teachers, but we must consider rural schools. There are some schools in my constituency in Mayo that will never reach six teachers. I think of Mountpleasant National School, which has already identified three children who would love to stay in the school with their siblings and avoid long bus journeys. By being in that school, as I said, they might be invited to the local birthday parties and become a part of the community. I thank the Minister, Deputy McEntee, who worked with me on this issue. We hope that in 2026, we will be able to open a classroom in the school in a flexible way without the need to reach six teachers.

We also need to consider the language that is used and I was glad to see that point being highlighted in the review. We need to move away from the health view of diagnoses and into an access and inclusion perspective. With that, we should do away with language such as "units" and stick to using "classrooms". They are not units or clinical settings. They are learning environments and classrooms. We must move away from "autism spectrum disorder" to person-centred language. You do not "have autism" but "are autistic", and are proud to be autistic and to have a different neurotype. We also need to move away from "special needs". They are not special needs but additional educational needs. We must help these children to realise their full potential in life.

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