Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

This single cut is enough to allow the Government to perish. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, is hiding behind a policy of inclusion. Not all children with special learning difficulties are suited to mainstream classes. Children with mild learning difficulties are low functioning, with IQs of between 50 and 70. The average person has an IQ between 90 and 110. Such children cannot cope with the pace of mainstream classes.

I spoke yesterday to the mother of a five year old child with mild learning difficulties and severe dyspraxia. That child cannot talk and also has mild learning difficulties. Most of the time these difficulties co-exist. The solution is either to keep the special needs classes or, if these children are to be put in mainstream classes, to give all mainstream teachers specialist training to deal with pupils with mild learning difficulties. That is not necessarily the best solution and would cost a good deal more than €6 million. Every child with a mild learning difficulty will require a weighting of approximately three and a half to four compared with other pupils. If a class contained nine children it would be approximately the same as 30 pupils in a mainstream class. I call on the Minister for Education and Science to introduce a weighting whereby every teacher taking a mild learning difficulty child will take down their cap or ratio by four pupils in the class.