Averil Power (Fianna Fail)

As Fianna Fáil spokesperson on education and skills, I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for his opening remarks.

Personally, I am glad the supports for children with special educational needs are the first education issue to be considered by the new Seanad. For a long time the needs of children with special needs were not addressed in any meaningful way by the education system. Special schools did great work, but opportunities for inclusion in the mainstream education system were virtually non-existent. As with other services for persons with disabilities, the record of the State for decades was poor. However, it must be said the previous Government chose to prioritise special education and while there are still inadequacies, there is no doubt considerable progress has been made. In 1996 and 1997 there were only 250 special needs assistants employed in our primary and special schools. By December 2010 this figure had risen to in excess of 10,000. A decision was taken in the last budget to cap rather than reduce the number of special needs assistants, SNAs, while cuts were being made in staff in many other areas. The number of resource and learning support teachers was also increased dramatically by the last Government to more than 9,000 at present compared with 2,000 in 1998. There are also more than 1,000 other teachers supporting pupils in special schools. As the Minister of State pointed out, altogether there are in excess of 20,000 adults working solely with pupils with special needs in our schools. Sometimes when we talk in terms of thousands we can lose sense of what it really means. To put this figure in context, in 1998 there were only 21,000 primary teachers in the entire education system. Now, there are almost as many people working solely with children with special needs. The progress made by the last Government was therefore significant. However, I realise far more must be done and I hope that when resources permit, further advances will be made in services for children with special needs. I appreciate that in the context of the current economic environment the Government, as was the case with its predecessor, will have difficult choices to make. However, I hope sincerely that Ministers will do everything they can to protect the advances that have been made in supports for children with special needs in recent years.

I realise there is a good deal of concern about potential future cuts in this area. With due respect, I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, for being here today. I realise the Minister, Deputy Quinn, had originally intended to be here but for good reason he was kind enough to attend the funeral earlier of the former Minister, Brian Lenihan, as were other Members of the Cabinet. I realise he could not make it today. However, I point out that there have been many recent U-turns in the education area and they are causing a good deal of concern. In opposition, the leader of the Labour Party stated:

Now is not the time for cuts in education. Labour would reverse the cuts in special needs classes, reinstate the school book grants for our schools, lift the cap on post-leaving cert courses and keep universal access to third level education.

Of course the recent revelations about the second Lisbon treaty referendum highlighted the fact that the Labour Party leader is prone to stating what he believes is politically popular while secretly planning to do the opposite. In the first three months in government the shallowness of Labour Party's commitment to education has been exposed as each commitment has been backtracked on one at a time. Understandably, this has caused a great deal of concern among students, teachers and parents throughout all levels of education. Apart from the obvious reversals, the considerable amount of doublespeak from the Minister for Education and Skills is a cause for concern. Instead of being upfront about the consequences of the employment control framework for the allocation of resource teachers in the next school year, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, has tried to pretend that it is not really a cut because the 10% of posts he is holding back may be allocated to schools in September. He is not guaranteeing anyone that they will be and he seems to be trying to fudge the issue and cause confusion. This is causing much concern among schools throughout the country. The Minister would do a better service to all concerned and to his own credibility if he were straight up with people about his intentions in this and other areas of education.

I assure the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, and Members on the other side of the House that Fianna Fáil tends to be constructive in Opposition. When we are given the right information and kept informed about what is really going on we will support measures in the national interest. We are simply keen to see the right thing done and our leader has demonstrated this to date. However, we need more clarity from the Government about what is intended.

Last year the Minister, Deputy Quinn, called on the Government to cease the review of special needs assistants that it had commissioned because he did not want the resources to be reviewed and he considered the review to be offensive in itself. However, some weeks ago he published the same review commissioned by the last Government. There is no indication yet of what he intends to do with it. It would be better for all concerned if there were some clarity from the Minister as to what he intends to do.

The issue of language support teachers is the other half of the debate before us today. As the Minister of State correctly pointed out there have been many improvements in this area in recent years. There are now almost 1,600 teachers working in the area of assisting children with English language needs, many multiples of the number five or six years ago. I acknowledge that the last budget provided for a cut in this area and it is only fair to accept responsibility for that. However, when the budget was announced for 2011 the proposed reduction was for 125 posts from this September. We have learned that the Minister, Deputy Quinn, intends to go further and double the cut in the number of language support teachers to 250 in a few months. Since the start of the year schools have been planning for the initial cut and preparing for how they would allocate resources but the short timeframe announced for a double cut is especially harsh.

As I stated at the outset, special education is an area in which great progress has been made but it is not always seen as an area of great political significance. When the last Government choose to prioritise special education over cuts in class sizes in general, the political and media interest was in what was going on in terms of class sizes as a whole. In fairness to Members on both sides of the House who supported the work that was being done, the tendency was for credit not to be given for the work that was being done. This goes back to our history of not prioritising the needs of people with disabilities as much as we should have.

I thank the Minister of State for being here. Fianna Fáil is genuine in its commitment to people with disabilities. We will do everything we can to help the Government to protect services as much as possible over the next three years. We wish the Government all the best with its work.