Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I am here to facilitate other Members this afternoon but I will take the opportunity to draw the attention of Members to the inoperable circular from the Department of Education and Skills with regard to language support resource teachers and full-time and part-time resource teacher posts. Our Lady's boys' national school in Ballinteer has 23 extra resource hours for children with special needs in mainstream classes. The school is two hours short of a full-time post. Next September, three children on the autistic spectrum will start in junior infants. As of yet, the school is not aware of the level of support these children will receive. This school has a very successful autism unit. Under this inoperable circular, the principal of the school has had to contact five other schools in the locality who might have lost hours from their permanent resource posts and allocate hours to them out of the 23 extra hours. This could mean that five different resource teachers will end up visiting Our Lady's boys' national school. It is possible that the children with special needs will be taught by several different teachers. This is farcical. Senator Barrett spoke about statistics and figures and this is all very logical and mathematical but at the coalface of education many of these situations are inoperable and useless because they do not take into consideration the situation in different schools.

The success of integrating boys with special needs in mainstream education is due to the ongoing support they can access in the school from the teacher based in the school. Children with special needs have to be removed from the mainstream classroom outside of their allocated resource time so that the resource teacher can look after them. Every class in every primary school in the United Kingdom has a teacher's assistant. Senator Barrett referred to the investment in education. We must look after the education needs of all our children to ensure our country will have a fair and equal society. Children with special needs are as entitled as the rest of us with all our faculties to develop their potential. This farcical, inoperable circular is hitting not only the neediest children but all children.