Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Tá áthas orm a bheith anseo san tSeanad. I thank the Leader for giving Government time to discuss this important issue. There are quite a number of children of varying needs across the system who need extra attention and care. There have been a number of occasions over the past three years when this House has debated this topic. I know it is of interest to many Senators. We recognise that very little attention was given to children with special educational needs. We have been playing catch up because it was not given the attention it deserved. In the past ten years everyone must agree that there has been a transformation in educational policy for children with special educational needs. In the lifetime of the Government over the past ten years, the changes give an indication of the progress in this area, while we recognise that the area needs investment and support.

Ten years ago there was no automatic entitlement to teaching or care support for children. Provision for children with special needs in mainstream schools was virtually non-existent. The vast majority of schools did not have resource or learning support teachers. Ten years ago there were only 252 special needs assistants in total, nearly all of which were in special schools. If a child had any significant educational or care need, the parents had no choice but to send the child to a special school. Special schools are excellent and do tremendous work but there was no opportunity to mix with other children who did not have special needs but who were in the same community.

At that time there were eight classes for children with autism throughout the country. Within ten years, vast changes have taken place. The first was when my colleague and predecessor, Deputy Martin, adopted the policy of automatic response. For the first time a child with a special educational need had the right to additional teaching or care support. Since then, the services have improved dramatically, particularly the right of each child to the maximum appropriate level of inclusion, in line with abilities, has been recognised and supported in legislation and in practice. I referred to the small number of special needs assistants, less than 300 ten years ago. There are now 10,000 special needs assistants in our schools, a figure that speaks for itself. Senators may think this is just a statistic but that is not the case. These are people working with children in our schools to enable them to get the support needed to learn.