Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)

Why is it a secret as to how many children with additional needs are without an appropriate class place? Whether it is one, ten or 100, it is one child too many, as we are talking about a child who is unable to go to school in Ireland in 2025.

There are two calls in particular in this motion tonight that I want to highlight. They are reasonable and sensible. They are to establish the school building delivery task force, to ensure the delivery on time and to meet the demand for special classes and special schools, and to publish and implement a costed medium to long-term strategic plan to guarantee that every child with additional needs has access to an appropriate class place. We need to plan. I do not know how many times that has to be said. It is not rocket science. A child who is born today does not need a school place tomorrow. There is adequate time to plan, but it is not being done. I cannot understand why that is the case.

I had a prime example in my own constituency in Ballinasloe. Scoil an Chroí Naofa in Ballinasloe town has been waiting 29 years for a promised new school. The school has three special classes and it would love to open more. Children in the area have recently gone to an autism spectrum disorder, ASD, class in Loughrea. They were promised a school bus but there was no school bus on day one of the school term. The school had to arrange taxis. The issue has since been sorted, but if the school in Ballinasloe got the new school it was promised 29 years ago, with the class places that are required, we would not be splitting up brothers and sisters, some of whom must trek to Loughrea. This can be solved, but we need to plan. The Government needs to sort this out once and for all.

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