Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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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.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Sherlock for raising this important issue. We have just had a discussion on the same issue with Deputy Whitmore. I reiterate that the Government is fully committed to the provision of additional special places for children with special educational needs. In this academic year, we have surplus special education provision. It was provided based on the numbers notified through the parents notify process, and a number of these places still exist nationwide. Over 2,700 new special education places have been provided. Many of these are in special classes, meaning there are now 3,741 special classes in our education system.

We will further build our specialist provision next year by providing at least 3,000 new places, placing provision in locations where it is best placed to meet existing and future demand. The Deputy has outlined that in her own local area there is demand and there is no special school. This will be borne out in that plan because we are doing it to make sure that existing and future demand is catered for. In addition, special school capacity was also expanded across a number of special schools nationwide and 16 new special schools have been established in recent years.

The NCSE will soon have a clear picture of local demand for special classes and special school places for the 2026-27 academic year after they review and assess all the information, which is then provided through the parents notify process that closed on 1 October, as the Deputy pointed out. This new timeline was publicised widely and was communicated to schools, special education advocacy groups and parent representative bodies. Of course, it is not as if any parent missed this deadline; there was a delay in getting the information they needed to be able to provide that through the portal. The NCSE also undertook some work at local level to ensure that families were aware of the set of timelines and processes, a lot of which was outside of their control. As the Deputy will be aware, the earlier notification deadline was introduced this year to equip the NCSE at an earlier stage with local information on the numbers of students who would be leaving school, transitioning to post-primary specialist places, seeking specialist placements or entering education for the first time. This information is absolutely critical for forward planning and examining where provision needs to be best placed to meet demand. The earlier date in October coincides with when the schools begin enrolment processes and it affords parents the opportunity to enrol in existing classes. Many mainstream schools, particularly at post-primary level, start the admission process for the following year on 1 October. That is why the date was chosen.

The NCSE is working now on sanctioning as many new special classes as possible for the 2026-27 academic year by 31 December. This will be four months earlier than last year and it will bring clarity and certainty for parents and schools as to where classes will be located. It will also afford greater lead-in times for schools that might require repurposing or major building works to get work started and completed. It will allow schools to recruit staff and undertake the training needed so that children are fully supported in those placements. Once the NCSE has fully collated and assessed the information they receive from the parents notify process, it will engage with schools across the country to open new special classes.

The NCSE will also have due regard to any vacant places in existing special classes in an area and any places that will become available through the normal movement of children leaving primary or post-primary education. They advise that the majority of children and young people coming through the parents notify process are already enrolled in school and are being supported by existing special education teachers and special needs assistants. I stress that the NCSE has committed that it will continue to support all children made known to them after that 1 October deadline.

Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State for that. We all appreciate the expansion in the number of places but the reality is that there was a time when Ministers here would get up and say that one did not need an assessment of need and that the education system did not need a diagnosis to provide additional support. Of course, that is the case for special schools but what we are seeing now is a potential deepening inequality between families. One of the families that approached me could not afford to go private for their child's assessment of need. They waited and their child is aged five now. They only got their assessment of need this year. They have been precluded from the process because they did not get all their service statement. They will now have to wait until next year. Another family with a child of the same age had the money to go and get the assessment done privately, and they have now got through the hoop and they are going to be assessed for next September. Why are we exacerbating this inequality between families with children with additional needs? It is beyond me why we would have a process put in place to supposedly show compassion and understanding, and to prevent the mismatch that we are seeing happening whereby children who should be in special schools are in autism spectrum classes, and children who should be in autism spectrum classes are in mainstream classes. This is a new barrier that has come into the education system.

I ask that the Minister of State would take this back to the NCSE. Something has to be done now, not for next year. It must be done now with regard to those families who have gone through the 1 October deadline and presented paperwork, even if it is incomplete, so that they are given a letter of eligibility. The second key thing is the need for a special school in Dublin 1. I ask that this be a priority for the Minister of State, of all the areas across the country, given the level of educational disadvantage. We need to see progress on that.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I agree with the Deputy. I do not think that an assessment of need should be a barrier to receive extra support. It is not in terms of preschool, or from an access and inclusion model perspective, or from an SNA perspective. I certainly want to get to a point where it is not a requirement for a special class or a special school either. That makes sense and I agree with the Deputy on that. This is something I will undertake. I am undertaking to work with the Minister for Education to get to that point.

With regard to a special school in the Deputy's constituency, these decisions will be made based on the data available to the NCSE. They now have new data available as of 1 October. They will be using the time between now and the end of the year to ascertain where the need is greatest and make the decisions based purely on that. If the need is very big, as the Deputy has suggested, I am sure this will come out in the data.

I assure the Deputy that the NCSE will continue to support all children made known to them who require specialist support. It is important to remember that support comes in so many forms within our education system. The vast majority of students with special educational needs are supported to attend school in mainstream classes with their peers. Obviously, they get fantastic support from SNAs but it is also really important that we continue to grow the number of special school places and the number of special schools that exist. This is something the Government has done in the last year and is doing again this year. It is a huge part of our national development plan and infrastructure commitments going forward.