Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I subscribe fully to Senator Cox's view that the education of people with special needs ought not be constrained by considerations of time. Given such people's needs, age is an artificial constraint. I am intrigued that the legislation is entitled the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Bill, when in fact it concerns education for children with special needs. Nonetheless, nobody would deny that the Bill is groundbreaking, positive and universally welcome. I compliment the Ministers involved, their officials and the Government for having produced this legislation. I wish them well in their struggles with the Department of Finance, which still insists that education is not a productive investment. It is hard to discern from where the Department got that notion, but if one reads the annual Book of Estimates, education is regarded as social expenditure. For those of us with eyes to see, however, education is a vastly productive investment. If we did not have primary education we would not have much of a productive nature going on in the country. The idea that education is not a productive investment is a figment of the Department of Finance's imagination, but it makes the Minister for Education and Science's struggle more difficult when such a mindset still prevails.

I wish the Ministers well. In their struggle for resources, they can be sure of the opposition's support, however negative it may be in its articulation. The opposition's job is to ensure that the pressure to obtain resources is both vigorous and successful. If the necessary resources are available it will make an enormous difference to children with special needs and to their parents who have suffered enormously from finding themselves in a hiatus, bereft of services or any understanding of their children's needs. I hope the legislation works well.