Joe O'Toole (Independent)

It makes one feel a bit stupid and foolish, after all the effort we put into the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act and our demands that it be commenced, that it is suspended. Some of us travelled around the country to explain it to people. Not only has the Act not been commenced but the Minister for Education and Science displayed a cowardly attitude in coming into the House yesterday, having cleared a press statement that would wreck the lives of 1,000 pupils, and not feeling it necessary to mention it. The Government is stretching deep into the depths of depravity in its approach to this issue, beginning with the soft target of the public sector last week and continuing with threats to the minimum wage yesterday. I hate to use the cliché but these people must be close to the most vulnerable in society. However, they do not vote, they cannot speak back and some cannot even speak that well. They are an easy target and we can simply trample all over them.

The Government needs to re-establish to where it is going. I do not believe anybody on this side of the House feels any worse about this than anybody on the other side. Decisions need to be taken. The attitude is that as long as you are one of the 35,000 millionaires or are earning more than €100,000 per year, you will not be asked to pay anything extra to people earning below that. The Leader asked us yesterday about the 1%, 2% and 3%. Everybody in the public and private sectors is paying that. That is not the issue about which we are talking. We are talking about the need for progressive taxation. Those who will be kept safe are those on high incomes and those with substantial assets. Those who will suffer are those like the children with special needs.

We will not have seen the backs of these children with special needs and I do not have to produce explanations, surveys or evidence. These children will come back to us through the care system because they will need extra care further down the line. They will come back to us in the ranks of the unemployed when we will have to pay them. They will come back to us when they need housing, when we will need to create sheltered housing. They will come back to us in the crime and the prison populations. That will be the result of the decision.

I cannot believe that the Taoiseach, who I know for more than 20 years, would have consciously taken that decision. I ask the Leader to ask him to reverse it immediately and make those of us who can afford it pay the price of this recession.