Joe O'Toole (Independent)

Before the election, I raised in this House the importance of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004. The Bill was passed through both Houses with acclaim on the basis that it would finally provide the resources necessary to allow people with special needs to reach their full potential. The guarantee given was that this would allow schools to do their work, would allow parents to be relieved of much of the pressure of fundraising and so on, and that the appropriate resources would be put in place between psychologists, psychiatrists and other therapists.

In order to put that in place, the Government established the National Council for Special Education, which is based in County Meath and is a very effective and impressive organisation. At the request of the Minister, it produced an implementation programme with three pages on implementations, the costing and timeframe for each one. The first implementation was to be made in December 2006. I would now like the Minister for Education and Science to explain what has happened to that timetable, why it is not being supported and why schools are now back in the position of not being able to deal with children with special needs. This causes trouble for parents, school authorities and everyone else.

There was a great brouhaha among politicians during the summer, myself included, about a lecturer in Athlone who was involved in an abuse case. I do not want to refer to that particular case, but during the debate the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children with responsibility for children made it clear that he would be enacting vetting legislation which would be welcomed by people working in child care, teachers and the Teaching Council. However, there are many political difficulties to this and the Minister of State should deal with that.

I congratulate the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government on his recent statement that every new house built from next year onwards should have a solar panel or a similar renewable energy resource. I failed four times in the last three years in this House to change the insulation standards to allow them to be based on the proper international standards, namely, the kilowatt hours required to heat a cubic metre of house space per year. This was opposed time and again by the Government side of the House. My latest proposal in the last Seanad and seconded by former Senator Brian Hayes was rejected by the House. I am glad to see that the new Minister has brought this forward. It is justification enough for me for the Green Party to be in the Government. I would like the Minister to come to the House and discuss it with us.