Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)

The Government is committed to the provision of additional special places for children with special educational needs. As the Deputies know, the school referred to by them has three special classes, two dedicated for children with autism and one for children with a developmental language disorder or speech sound disorder.

The school is to be commended on its proactiveness and willingness to open further special classes to supports its community. Indeed, the hard work and dedication to special education was evident when the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, visited the school earlier this year with the Deputies.

Budget 2026 secured funding for 3,000 new specialist places and the NCSE is currently examining where these places are best located for the 2026-2027 school year. In County Dublin, 705 special classes are now in operation providing capacity for over 4,200 students. This includes 103 new special classes for this school year. There are also 42 special schools in Dublin with approximately 2,700 students enrolled. Two of the five new special schools being established for the 2025-2026 school year are located in Lucan and Belmayne.

The NCSE will have a clear picture of local demand for specialist places for the 2026-2027 school year after it reviews and assesses all of the information which has been provided through the parents notification process which closed on 1 October.

The NCSE is also engaging directly with schools' boards of management in relation to the opening of new special classes. This engagement and earlier scrutiny of information means that the NCSE is on track to sanction the majority of new classes for the 2026-2027 school year by 31 December this year, four months earlier than in previous years.

In addition, in order to ensure new special classes can open as quickly as possible, the NCSE will continue to prioritise working with medium and larger primary schools that do not already have a special class and have available accommodation to accommodate a new special class. This approach maximises the use of existing space which can be reconfigured efficiently while ensuring that new provision continues to be established. It also increases the number of schools with special classes providing parents with greater choice and reducing the distances that some children are travelling to access a specialist placement. However, as in other years where schools have no available accommodation, particularly at post-primary level, and there is known demand in a local area, the Department will continue to provide additional classroom accommodation to provide necessary places.

This earlier commitment to the sanctioning of special classes combined with the rollout of the common application system pilot are some of the ways this Government is committed to ensuring the burden on parents is alleviated when seeking a specialist placement particularly in high areas of demand such as in Dublin 13.

I assure the Deputies that the Department and the NCSE are committed to ensuring that sufficient special education placements remain available for all children with special educational needs.

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