Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am very disappointed that neither the Minister for Education nor the Minister of State with responsibility for special education is here today. This goes to the heart of the way Scoil Eoin in Ballincollig has been treated. It is insulting to the seriousness of this issue we have tabled that the Ministers are not here to discuss it. Scoil Eoin in Ballincollig in Cork has been trying to secure special classes for over 11 years, since 2013. The principal, staff, board of management and parents have done everything they could to work with the Department to secure funding to provide these much-needed classes. They have been blocked at every opportunity. The school requires €4.5 million to knock and rebuild a section of the school. Given the limited space, knock and rebuild is the only viable solution. A grant of €800,000 has been made towards a subsidence issue in the same section of the school and €300,000 has been sanctioned to replace a prefab in it. That €1.1 million would be better spent on a new build rather than putting sticking plasters over a building that is not fit for purpose and needs to be replaced. I am asking the Minister of State to give a commitment on when the Minister will meet the school community in Ballincollig and a commitment that this money will be forthcoming.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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How many children with autism in the town of Ballincollig have been let down badly by the State and the Government? I know of 21 straight off the bat. They are the boys who attend the Scoil Eoin primary school, who are forced to struggle along in mainstream classes when special classes are what they need. This was recognised three years ago by the National Council for Special Education, which gave the green light for three special classes at the school. Three years on, there is nothing. Why? It is because the Department will not authorise €4.5 million for knock and build, the only option that does not take vital space and services, such as the library, away from other students.

Of course, there are many other children with autism in Ballincollig who are being disadvantaged. They include children who have had to be taken out of Scoil Eoin, away from their brothers and friends, to go to special classes elsewhere, outside the town, often more than half an hour away. I am asking the Minister of State today to arrange a meeting between the Minister and representatives of the school in May, and to encourage the Minister to come to that meeting with some good news for those students and their parents. It is the right thing to do and it has taken too long already.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I do not want to pre-empt what the Minister of State might say. I confirm that I spoke to the Minister last Friday after the public meeting that the three of us attended. She confirmed to me and the principal that she would meet him in the next three to four weeks. That meeting is confirmed and arranged. I suppose that is a first step. I will not dwell on the history because the two previous speakers have outlined it. Over the last number of years in this House, I have always pointed to the deficit of ASD classes in Ballincollig, and it was not even in our electoral area at that point, such is the difficulty for parents there in sourcing ASD places for their children.

Historically, people in Ballincollig would be farming their children out to outlying villages like Ovens, Farran, Dripsey and Inishcarra on minibuses and taxiing them all around the place. The problems in Ballincollig have been known for a long time at departmental level and locally in Cork.

From this debate, and I do not know if this is included in the Minister of State's response, I would like to have it reaffirmed that the Minister is going to have this meeting. As I said, she verbally committed to do so. The most important thing after that, as was previously alluded to, is that a significant amount of work will have to be done on the site. There is probably a two-pronged response to this issue. There will be a medium-term to long-term response in terms of the demolition and rebuilding. There is also the issue of what we are going to do in the short term, which may include looking at modular buildings in the interim while the larger-scale project is under way.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Before I call the Minister of State to respond, I wish to make the procedures here quite clear. When a Deputy tables an issue for a Topical Issue debate and it is selected, the Department is notified. If the Department is not able to supply a Minister or a Minister of State, the Department is required to contact the Member and tell them so. The Member may then decide to proceed with the Topical Issue debate or not. If people were not happy, then they should not have proceeded. If they were happy, then sin scéal eile. We are very pleased the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, is here and that he will cast some light on this matter for us.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Go raibh maith agat. Gabhaim buíochas arís le gach Teachta as scéal Scoil Eoin a ardú inniu. On behalf of the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, I will outline how the Department and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, continue to support children with special educational needs around the country and I will deal especially with the issues raised.

It is a priority to ensure that all children have an appropriate school placement and that the necessary supports are provided to our schools to cater to the needs of children with special educational needs. In 2024, €2.7 billion will be spent on special education, which is an increase of €113 million. Among other things, this will allow for the opening of up to 400 new special classes in mainstream schools and 300 additional special school places.

The NCSE has responsibility for co-ordinating and advising on education provision for children with special educational needs nationwide. Over the past few years, the Department and the NCSE have introduced a number of strategic initiatives to plan for and provide sufficient mainstream, special class and special school places. These initiatives are bearing fruit, with over 1,300 new special classes sanctioned and seven new special schools established over the past four years. The Department engages intensely with the NCSE on the forward planning of new special classes and additional special school places. This forward planning work is well under way ahead of the 2024-25 school year.

Along with two new special schools opening this school year, 390 new special classes, which break down to 254 at primary and 136 at post-primary level, have been sanctioned by the NCSE for opening this school year. Of these, 76 are in Cork, 52 at primary level and 24 at post-primary level. This brings to 496 the number of special classes in County Cork, 351 at primary and 145 at post-primary level.

On Scoil Eoin, I can confirm, as the Deputies have outlined, that the Department received an application in 2021 under the additional schools accommodation, ASA, scheme for funding for the provision of three special education classrooms. The Department’s school building technical team carried out an in-depth review of the school site in 2021. The review confirmed that the school and the site are at maximum capacity and that it would not be possible to provide the required accommodation on site unless vast amounts of existing accommodation were to be demolished and replaced with two-storey accommodation. At that time, considering all the relevant impediments to delivering the brief of accommodation and the site constraints, the Department was not in a position to provide funding for the significant demolition of the school building. In light of this, the Department contacted the NCSE to advise it of this and to establish the special classes in other schools in the area.

In January 2024, the NCSE confirmed the need for special classes in the area. The NCSE and the Department are working to identify suitable locations for those classes to ensure that the children who require access to this provision can avail of it as soon as possible. Separately, the board of management of Scoil Eoin subsequently submitted a new engineer’s condition report to the Department in support of its proposal to knock down and rebuild a portion of the school building. The Department's technical team will review the contents of this report and officials from the Department will consult with the school authority on completion of this review. I know that Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan has arranged a meeting with the Minister, Deputy Foley, and there will be a chance to engage on this issue further directly with her then.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Am I to understand from the reply that the Department carried out an in-depth review of the site in 2021 and that it took until January 2024 for the NCSE to confirm that three classes were needed, which it knew were needed before it started in the first place? Is that what the reply is saying?

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Yes.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle because I think he has highlighted an important issue. It is shocking to go back over some of the points in this reply. Mention was made of supporting children and enabling students with additional needs to receive an education. The Minister of State also said it is a priority to ensure that all children have an appropriate school placement. He said that €2.7 billion is being spent.

He spoke about these points and then, at the same time, he spoke about the Department refusing to knock down what is on this site and then rebuild. He then talked about suitable locations in Ballincollig. I wish to tell the Minister of State something. This has been an issue for 11 years for this principal. He loves this school. The board of management has done everything. It is a disgrace what is happening. The schools in Ballincollig are full. The primary schools are full and the secondary schools are full.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I thank the Deputy.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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All the children of the nation should be cherished equally. They are not being cherished in Ballincollig. There are children with additional and special needs who have nowhere to go to school. It is a disgrace.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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The Minister of State used a lot of statistics in his reply. I am not going to use statistics. I am going to give him the words of a parent in the form of an extract taken from a letter that was sent. This parent had to move her child out to another school. She wrote that her family is being literally ripped apart and that instead of dropping her three children to school, she is now only dropping two of them. She continued by saying that the worst part, however, is that her most vulnerable child, whose main issue is anxiety and regulation, now has to leave an environment that was so familiar to him and travel in a taxi, without his family as security, for 30 minutes to an unknown school. This person then said she is absolutely gutted as a mother because she cannot give her son what he needs. She said he needs Scoil Eoin, his SNA that he has had for two years and the familiarity of the teachers and his classmates. She finished by saying she felt like she had failed him.

I would say to that parent that, no, she has not failed her son at all. The State has failed him. I would like to get some indication from the Minister of State that when the meeting that has been set up takes place, the Minister will be coming with some good news for the school and for parents like this.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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There are a couple of things in play here. I acknowledge initially that approximately 20 children are impacted. They are already in situ in the school. Not all of them will require an ASD class. There are many who are pending assessments and so on. There is, however, still a requirement in this regard. As the Minister of State said in his response, three classes were allocated and this gives an idea of the demand there generally. We are up to 18 children, anyway, based on three classes being filled. The meeting is going to happen, but the most important thing for me is that a commitment was given to review the documentation sent back by the school and the board of management. All I ask is that this documentation is reviewed expeditiously. As the Ceann Comhairle highlighted, it was submitted in January 2024 and it is now four months later. I think four or five months is sufficient time for anybody in the building unit to make a decision one way or the other. I say this because parents and families will have to make big decisions if this development is not allowed to proceed. I think it is in everybody's best interests that it is treated with the utmost urgency and that we just get on and make a decision as expeditiously as possible.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I can assure all the Deputies that the Minister has recently secured significant extra capital funding for the Department. She fought very hard to secure it. The board of management's report will be assessed. Extensive demolition proposals were examined in the original review. The new engineer's conditional report will be assessed. The Minister has committed to Deputy O'Sullivan that she will have the meeting and discuss this issue. I think this issue does need to be explored. To Deputy Barry, I say that statistics are very important because this reflects the number of classes being stood up. I refer to the number of new classes and the level of new provision being stood up in the area.

That shows the Department is investing and making new classes available. I certainly will reflect to the Minister the strength of feeling and the observations of the Ceann Comhairle on the reply to her as well.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Kinsale and Bandon are not local, just to let the Minister of State know that. I see parents who have to take their kids all over Cork. It is not good enough.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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It seems to me that the NCSE is the body that has significant questions to answer about how it conducts its business, if it took three years to conclude what the Department had concluded in 2021. There is progress. The Minister is going to meet and hopefully matters will move on for the children, who are the most important people, and they will be looked after.