Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

When I contacted the National Council for Special Education, it said that of 1,000 schools, the number of special needs assistants has been cut by 300. There are 4,000 primary schools so if we extrapolate from that, perhaps it is from there the author got the figure because it would come to 1,200.

The Government is guilty of misinformation. The problem is the criteria. A number of Senators on the Government side and the Minister said that any child who needs a special needs assistant will get one. I am delighted with that statement because there will be a massive queue at their doors. I will pass on the record to the parents who have concerns and the teachers who need that proof.

The problem is the criteria. The upshot of this is the fact the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act has not been implemented. Until that Act is implemented, none of our children's rights is protected. The reason the school represented by the people in the Visitors Gallery, who are not here at my invitation, who are here of their own free will and whom I have never met until this evening, are about to lose 12 special needs assistants and ten teachers is that it is being judged under the special education review committee report of 1993 which preceded the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act that has not yet been implemented. The SERC report will increase their pupil-teacher ratio and, as a result, the school will lose 12 SNAs and ten teachers. Those are the criteria and they are wrong. The Minister cannot argue with these facts. If the NCSE gets its way, the school will have to close because it will not be able to guarantee the health and safety of students and staff. I ask the Minister if this a political football. This is real.

My concern is the child's learning in order that he or she will grow to be independent. These children will have no swimming, no home economics, no woodwork practicals and no certificate examinations. These are children from four to nine years age. What will their future entail? This Government, by applying these criteria, is destroying and educationally maiming these children's lives and it fills me with disgust. The NCSE's criteria is outdated and does not take modern developments or needs into account.

The National Council for Special Education's special educational needs organisers, SENOs, interpret psychologists' reports, although they are not qualified to do so. Many Senators on the Government side, including Senator Keaveney, will be concerned that the review processes which they are carrying out in schools are unsatisfactory because they do not consult the staff. The teachers and the SNAs are not included in the consultation process. Some teachers in schools in Galway have told me they are not consulted at all. It is as if they have no intellect or no experience with the child. The SENO only sits in the class for half an hour. That review process is flawed.

In the case of the school, representatives of which are in the Visitors Gallery, the speech and language and communication disorders of their children were completely ignored because the children's IQ was between 45 and 70. That means that if one has a low IQ, one's speech or understanding does not matter. I have been a teacher and a lecturer in teacher education and I am a parent of two young children, and that really matters.

I call on the Government to publish the NCSE's advice and to provide a timeline and the resourcing for the implementation of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act which will protect all our children's educational rights. I commend the Government on enacting that legislation but it should implement and resource it.