Joe O'Toole (Independent)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. Tá an t-ábhar ata idir lámha againn sa díospóireacht seo thar a bheith tábhachtach agus fairsing. Ba mhaith liom díriú isteach ar ghné amháin de leasú Fhine Gael - an giota a dhéanann déileáil leis an Acht EPSEN.. I want to focus on that issue. Members are aware I have raised this on many occasions. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Áine Brady, who is well aware of the views I shared with her on many occasions. As a teacher, when the EPSEN Act was published, I thought it was as close as I could have dreamed to the ideal response to special needs education. I might have written the words in the Act differently but in terms of what it sought to do, I was part of it. It is not rights-based but is as close to being rights-based as is practical. The Act suggests that as long as the State can deal with it, it should deal with it in a particular way.

I received commitments from Ministers about this. A number of amendments that were important to me were accepted as the Bill was passed. I thought it was so important that I set up meetings throughout the country and produced information and training documents about the Act so that teachers could understand what it was about, how they should use it and its importance. That took place in 2005 and it is appalling the Act was never commenced. The Government has now decided not to commence it for the foreseeable future.

This is important because the advocacy issues raised in the motion before the House become less important if the EPSEN Act is in place. It is important people recognise what is in this. Parents, a class teacher, a principal or a medical person might identify a special need or a learning problem in a child. This could then be confirmed by a school principal or class teacher.

Following this was a legal requirement that the child be assessed within a number of months, following which a full assessment had to be presented to the school and the class teacher, if appropriate. It was also available to the parents and appealable by them if they considered it was incorrect or that there were things wrong with it. The assessment identified the resources and support the child would need in a learning environment. It was a requirement for a wide-ranging team of professionals to meet, including psychologists, psychiatrists and various therapists, including speech and language therapists, among others. They would determine how the child's needs would be dealt within a school setting. They brought forward a learning plan referred to by Senator Healy Eames as an individual education plan, IEP. In essence, it was an ad hoc programme designed to help the individual child to cope with his or her learning difficulties. It was then determined how the plan would be implemented. The hope was it would generally be implemented by the class teacher and done over the course of a year, at the end of which the class teacher, the principal teacher and any others whom it was considered necessary would assess whether the child had improved and if the plan had had a positive impact in helping him or her. If that was not the case, they would rewrite the programme. If it was considered the school did not have the capacity to deal with the particular needs of the child in putting a programme together, an appeal could be made to one of committees of the National Council for Special Education and it would put a programme together. At every single stage of the process the parents were involved and an appeals option was built in. An appeal could be made by the parents, the school authorities or various other named persons.

There was no need for advocacy in such a system. Children were brought through it and it fell into place to support them. It was not particularly expensive because much of it was school based and involved harnessing the skills, professional ability, knowledge and experience of the stated professions. It was a perfect resource. It was a case of a child with special needs learning with his or her peers within a school. I do not wish to use any of the terms used to describe this because they all cause difficulty. Language deteriorates at an extraordinary rate in the field of special education. Words in use five years ago are no longer acceptable. I remember all of them because I am that old and do not use them anymore. I describe what it is I want to say. I am talking about children learning with others in their peer group.

If the Government was to give a commitment to indicating a date for the commencement of the various sections of the EPSEN Act, it would do more for children with special needs than anything else. I give credit to it for one thing; the one aspect of the Act it has progressed three quarters of the way is the appointment and employment of educational psychologists. The appropriate number has not been reached, but the Government has gone a long way towards reaching it. That is useful. However, the problem is that until the number reaches the level required, the educational psychologists employed will spend all of their time assessing when they can visit schools, classes and support programmes, offer a view and engage with the class teacher, principal teacher and parents, as required. In that way there is team support working through the system. I accept an educational psychologist will only visit a school once every couple of weeks, but one must have the numbers required for this to work.

I deliberately picked out that one aspect and it is a shame that to which I have referred has not been done. At least, the Government might consider giving a commitment to considering how it might be done. I will not get into an argument about economies. The legislation has been in place since 2005 before we got into difficulty. It might be acceptable for the Minister to argue about economies if the Act had been passed last year, but it has been in place since 2005. The National Council for Special Education which is subject to many complaints and criticism was given the job by the Government of outlining an action plan for implementation of the Act. The exercise it carried out could act as a role model in terms of best practice. It outlined and costed every action point and timeline. We could well have had the money in 2005, 2006 or 2007, but the Government decided to walk away, which was a shame.