Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)

I welcome the motion from Sinn Féin and the opportunity to raise these issues and concerns relating to school places for children with additional education needs. The Labour Party will absolutely support the motion. This is the third motion on this subject in 2025, including one of our own. The reality for a significant number of children with additional education needs and their parents has not changed. The number of parents contacting my office and the offices of colleagues across this House is actually increasing. However, I will acknowledge the role that the Minister of State has played. There has been slight progress. He has worked well and I appreciate that, but the scale of the progress that we need is significant. When it comes to additional educational needs, the State is completely failing children and their families and has done so for a long time. As the motion outlines, there is no centralised system within the Department or the NCSE to deal with applications for a special school place. This fact immediately presents parents with difficulties. I could not believe when I learned it that the NCSE has no centralised application system. Any private company across the country that would deal with significant numbers at this scale would have a centralised system to deal with these numbers. There is a significant lack of accountability when it comes to these numbers, and we cannot track the number of children who require an appropriate special educational needs setting. Parents are in limbo throughout any process they may follow to get a school place for their child, so much so that they will travel long distances in the morning and the afternoon after school to get to and from a school that provides for their additional need and that is of course if they can actually access that school place. That is not actually a solution. It is an exception they make to ensure their child's education. It should not be a solution to it. It should be the case that if children want to go to a school, they are able to access the school in their own locality. We all know that the best thing we can do for children with additional needs is integrate them into their communities. I have children in my own family who have additional needs, and the best thing we can do for them is to integrate them into their communities. I will share this very personal circumstance. I have a cousin at home who is five years old and deaf. He travels to Cork city every day to go to school. His sister, who is four, is now attending school in Mallow. That is the difficulty that child faces. It is upsetting to hear it and it is upsetting to accept it, for my uncle and my aunt who have to accept that and explain the conversation to that young child. That is the difficult part of it. The paradox we are faced with is that we have never had more teachers or SNAs in our system. We have 407 new special classrooms and five new special schools. However, significant challenges remain, and that is the fundamental issue.

I also want to speak to the significant issue of appropriate school places. I am educated on this. I taught in schools where appropriate settings had to be put in place.

I understand the need for an appropriate school setting for a child with special educational needs, that is, for that child's own needs. Children who have special educational needs are not all the same. Therefore, not every setting is appropriate for every child. No longer in this country can we have a special educational needs setting that does not give a child the good education they deserve and need.

The number of SNAs can never be capped. There should never be a freeze on SNA provision in this country. If the NCSE or a special educational needs officer in an area tells the Department that SNA provision must be given to a particular school, then it must be done.

I also want to focus on school transport, which is under the remit of the Minister of State and I appreciate this. During the summer I called for an overhaul of the school transport system. It is very easy for me on this side of the House to say we need an overhaul of the school transport system but we know, the Minister of State's colleagues in Government know, and every person who comes to us during the summer looking for school transport knows that there is very little I or any other TD can do. I am sick of ringing Bus Éireann and speaking to it about specific cases. It is a system that is failing children, and in particular children with special educational needs. It is deeply frustrating and upsetting to come across families who have found a special educational needs setting for their child but cannot access it because of transport. This should not be the case and the Minister of State and I both know this. I will say there is no quick fix to this and that is absolutely accepted.

I want to focus on assessments of need. There are more than 15,000 children in the country, with an estimation of there being 25,000 children by the end of the year, waiting on an assessment of need in the country. This is before any therapies are involved. In a country so affluent, we are a fantastic country for waiting lists. They will remain with us unless appropriate plans are established and put in place. No child in this country should be without the necessary therapies, supports and resources they so badly need because of a waiting list issue that has sprung up over many decades. I am more than willing to work with the Minister of State and the Department on policy initiatives that would help this situation. At the centre of this are children and they are what is most important.

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