Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)

I suspect I will be raising a lot of the issues Deputy Whitmore raised. I am coming to this from a position of enormous frustration because of the lack of co-ordination and planning within the Department of education in tandem with the Department of Health over many years. The parent notify system, in theory, is great. I know the date was, of course, brought forward this year to allow both Departments to be able to plan for the future. I very much welcome it. However, the actual process is failing a number of families really badly across the country. Families have contacted me who have put in their application for 1 October but because all parts of the assessment of need process, the service statement in particular, were not ready, they have been told by the special educational needs organiser, SENO, that they cannot get a letter of eligibility and they are just going to have to wait until next year. It is simply disgraceful for a system that was set up to try to identify children. The child has had the assessment of need; they are just waiting on the service statement but they are still told, “No”. It is another barrier being put up to these children.

For how many years have people stood up in this Chamber talking about the families who are having to apply 20 or 30 schools? Think of the cost of a birth certificate for every single application. We have to transform how special educational places are allocated in this country. There is a huge mismatch as it is. I welcome initiatives like the parent notify system but it is not working, particularly when these barriers are being put up at a local level.

We have to remember the assessment of need process takes three to four years in most areas across the country. The particular issue that I ask the Minister of State to look into concerns the service statements. We know there can be a delay of six months or more for parents to receive their service statement because of quality control issues with regard to outsourced assessments of need and co-ordination within children's disability network teams, CDNTs.

We have that context. Then we have the context of the lack of special classes and special schools. Of course there is the whole issue of the lack of special needs assistants, SNAs, in certain primary schools across the country. We need a degree of common sense and cop on, which is not what we are seeing from some SENOs.

I have previously been very critical of parts of the National Council for Special Education, NCSE. I think there is some fantastic work being done by the NCSE but it is really patchy. There is a lack of consistency with regard to what is being done across the country. We know that some SENOs are not applying common sense with regard to the letter of eligibility.

I want to use my remaining time to raise a related issue with the Minister of State. I understand what she will say about the new special schools that have been built. That is wonderful, but there are 16 CDNTs across this country that have no special school in their catchment area. One of those areas is Dublin 1. No child in Dublin 1 will ever be top of the waiting list for a special school because there is none in the Summerhill CDNT area. That is wrong. That is so wrong because the level of need in that area is higher than in many other parts of the country. We need a special school in Dublin 1.

I appreciate that the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, is stepping in for the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan today. We had hoped he would be here. The specific point I am putting to the Minister of State is that we need to see a change to the parent notify system.

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