Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)

Urgent and deeply troubling concerns have been brought to me by the staff of Casa Caterina special school in Cabra, a school that provides critical education and care for children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties. I understand the Minister of State is stepping in tonight for the Minister of State with responsibility for special education. I feel that this issue is also directly related to the Minister of State's own brief. Casa Caterina is not just a school.

It is a lifeline that serves 36 of the most vulnerable children in this State. These are children who have been removed from mainstream settings and placed in the care of a staff who are doing everything humanely possible to provide stability, dignity and to provide education to this cohort of young students. However, they are doing so without the vital supports they need to do the job effectively and what the children in that school deserve. To put it plainly, we have a special school with absolutely no specialised interventions. There are no behavioural therapists, no psychologists, no play or music therapy, no social care workers and no multidisciplinary team. What they have in the school is just a handful of very brilliant teachers and SNAs who are, at this point and every single day, stretched beyond reason while doing their best to hold it together in an environment that is immensely challenging.

Casa Caterina is one of only a handful of schools in Ireland for children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties, often alongside a diagnosis of autism and ADHD. The school is stretched to its limits. These are children who have really complex needs, incredible potential and an urgent right for proper supports. Even more appalling is that many of these children come from DEIS schools and, when they move to Casa Caterina, they lose their DEIS supports. They lose the home school community liaison officer, access to school completion programmes and the essential wraparound services that are proven to keep children engaged and safe. If the Minister of State can imagine for a second, so complex are the needs of the children who are in Casa Caterina that they are not suitable for a DEIS programme school. Their vulnerabilities are so complex and their needs so great that they are not suitable for the DEIS environment but they are placed in a school that loses all associated supports.

The staff at Casa Caterina, under the leadership of acting principal, Lorna Cahill, and acting deputy principal Edel Troy, have done everything in their power. They are crying out for better supports, not for themselves but for the children they very clearly love and fight for every day. They are pleading for a fit-for purpose building, a multidisciplinary team consisting of mental health supports, and recognition that this school is not like every school and cannot be funded like one. No teacher, no SNA and no human could sustain this without urgent change. The Education Act 1998, guarantees every child the right to an appropriate education, and that right is very clearly being denied by neglect, by inaction and by refusing to treat schools such as Casa Caterina as the specialised settings they are. The children and staff of Casa Caterina will be visiting the Dáil in two weeks' time. They will walk through the gates of Leinster House and see the very place that has the power to change their futures. Will the Minister of State meet with Casa Caterina leaders and listen to what they need? Will she provide the specialist staff and therapeutic supports that should have been in place from day one? Will she recognise the school for what it is, namely, a blueprint for how the State should be treating its most vulnerable children but one that is operating without dignity, without the associated expertise that is required, and without the care and interventions of the State they sorely lack?

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