Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the parents in the Gallery. These parents suffer every day because this Government is not doing its job. Every child deserves a place in school and every child with additional needs deserves a place in school. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed, and continue to fail, children. It is the ordinary families like the parents here tonight who break their necks and are left simply to cope on their own, to pay for every intervention their children need. An estimated 260 children were without an offer of an appropriate place at the start the summer but we know that the scale of this is far greater, with campaign groups identifying a further 168 children. Others who have been offered a place face uncertainty due to delays in building works and also with no transport. This is a failure. It is a failure to plan, a failure to invest and a failure to deliver adequate school infrastructure and supports over successive Governments. It is either a failure of priority or basic competency. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan where we have secured an additional 18 spaces for special education in Castleblayney, it is not nearly enough, as the Minister of State said earlier. This school is not open yet. He said that at the start of October he is going to start to plan for the future. What happened all the years that he has been in government that he did not plan? The school in Castleblayney was only a stopgap, with 18 places for all the children in County Monaghan who have special needs. What we need in County Monaghan is a permanent special school, not a school with just 18 places. We need a permanent school and I have been told that a letter as sent to the Department offering the ground for a permanent school and the Minister of State has not acted on it. The time for a crisis-driven approach to special education must come to an end. Sinn Féin's motion outlines what this Government needs to do and these are the measures that every TD should support.

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