Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I congratulate former Senator Alan Kelly and wish him well in Europe. Politics is about people's lives and the positive effect it can have on the quality of their lives. Today, I am particularly dismayed to hear that only ten of the 128 special needs classes which the Minister for Education and Science proposes to cut won their appeal. In one of the unsuccessful classes, which I know well, there are two children who cannot speak, two children who need to be toileted and another child regularly appears in the centre of the classroom having stripped off all his clothes. All of the children in this class have multiple disabilities. These seven children are now to be mainstreamed, which makes absolutely no sense.

My question to the Leader is what type of appeals process did the Minister use and how genuine was it. What was the criteria by which ten classes were successful while the others were not? I believe, as an educator, that the Minister is leaving the State wide open to future litigation on the basis of the unmet educational needs of these children. Not alone will the children have difficulty coping, teachers will have difficulty coping. This is a crying shame. I appeal, through the Seanad, to the Minister for Education and Science to reconsider this situation. While the number of children involved is only 500, this move represents 500 children dismissed and forgotten. These are children who in the past may have been placed in institutions and who may now not be much better off unless the receive the resources they need in the classroom. The Minister's report published a few years ago stated we are not set up to mainstream children with these needs.