Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)

I sincerely thank Deputy Dolan for raising this important matter and allowing me the opportunity to outline the changes on behalf of the Government and his party colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for special education, Deputy Michael Moynihan, that have been recently made to the enrolment criteria for specific speech and language disorder special classes.

There are 63 special classes for pupils with specific speech and language disorder attached to mainstream primary schools in dispersed geographical locations. These classes cater for pupils with a very specific set of language needs for a maximum of two years. The enrolment criteria for these classes originate from the recommendations of the special education review committee report, SERC, in 1993. As envisaged by SERC, the classes were designed to provide a time-limited, targeted intervention for children with severe impairments in their skills of understanding and expressing themselves through spoken language.

The inspectorate division of the Department published a composite report on the quality of provision for children attending these classes in 2021. While, overall, the inspectorate reported positively on this provision, significant issues were noted. These included: enrolment criteria for entry to the special SSLD classes used at the time did not align neatly with the current diagnostic definition of developmental language disorder, DLD, which has been used by speech and language therapists in Ireland and internationally since 2017. Some schools indicated that there were difficulties caused by the divergence between the DLD diagnostic criteria and the narrower SSLD definitions, as well as the requirement for psychological assessments to establish children's intellectual ability.

The inspectorate report noted that the disparity in definition between the DLD diagnostic and original SSLD enrolment criteria must be addressed as a matter of urgency to ensure that the pupils most in need of this specialised support will continue to be prioritised for enrolment. It will be equally important that pupils with lesser language needs, but who might fit into the broader DLD diagnostic category, are supported more appropriately throughout the educational system.

In September 2024, the Department undertook a review of Circular 0038/2007. This review has been completed and an updated circular, Circular 0024/2025, was published, as alluded to by the Deputy, on the 20 March 2025. This circular, Criteria for Enrolment in Special Classes for Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or Speech Sound Disorder (SSD), is available online.

The term SSLD will no longer apply to entry to these classes and will be replaced instead with developmental language disorder-speech sound disorder, DLD-SSD. This amendment will apply, in some cases, for the 2026-2027 school year, as the admission process had already been completed for 2025-2026. Schools were notified to that effect on the publication of the revised circular. The revised criteria see, among other changes, the removal of reference to IQ as one of the entry criteria for these classes.

In terms of co-morbidity, it is important to clarify that the criteria for access to the DLD-SSD class do not exclude children with any co-morbid conditions, such as Down's syndrome. The circular acknowledges that both the DLD and SSD of unknown origin diagnoses may have co-morbidities. A co-morbid condition is one that exists alongside another and is not causative. The Department acknowledges that there may be children for whom their SSD is of unknown origin but there are co-morbid conditions and there are others where the SSD results from a particular medical or biomedical diagnosis. The circular will be subject to review, and will involve the full range of education and health stakeholders. I will make it my business to ensure that Deputies who raise the issue in this House will also have the opportunity to feed into it.

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