Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will bring the Minister of State back to October 2018, when I first met representatives of the Autism School Dublin 15 committee, which campaigns for a dedicated special school. They spoke about how autism spectrum disorder units would not meet the complex needs of all their children, many of whom are non-verbal, have behavioural challenges and might be flight risks or suffer from violent outbursts or self-harm. They can also experience sensory overloads, which can be overwhelming.

Mainstream schools and their curriculum were not the appropriate environment for these children. The result is they were often on reduced hours or, tragically, expelled through no fault of their own.By very young ages these children or their families had been through so much and got so little because the system did not support them and did not see them a lot of the time. This group of parents, principals and professionals, through surveys and questionnaires, helped everyone, including the NCSE, to see all these children, whether they were in the wrong environments, on reduced hours, had home tuition grants or travel long distances outside Dublin 15 and Dublin 7 to access education. This group still knows better than anyone what the children need.

In February 2019, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board, DDLETB, came on board and offered a site for a special school at Riversdale Community College as a patron. In April 2019, the official letter went to the then Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, outlining the insufficient special school and special class capacity in Dublin 15 for September 2019 and beyond. In September 2019, Danu was opened. It welcomed its first student on 28 November in temporary accommodation on the site of Hansfield Educate Together Secondary School. Danu has worked incredibly hard to look after these children, even through Covid, caring for them and teaching them skills in an environment and a building that is not purpose-built for vulnerable children with complex needs while sharing a site with a secondary school. Hansfield Educate Together Secondary School was only ever to be temporary accommodation, and the plan was to move to Riversdale Community College, also in temporary accommodation that would require appropriate work to make it suitable and safe while a new school building was constructed on a site beside it. We were told that that new school building would take approximately five years. Everyone was on board, even though the temporary accommodation would never be ideal, even though Danu is sharing a car park and vehicle access with a mainstream secondary school and even though many of these children are flight risks and require safety procedures and protections all the time. However, it now seems that the temporary plans at Riversdale are to become permanent, to include six classrooms, a staff room, a principal's office, a secretary's office, toilets and other rooms, and that the classrooms will be smaller than they are currently because they are dealing with existing rooms. They currently accommodate four children but that will increase to six, and the plan is for more work on the site. They will have a separate door. The buildings will be divided but the schools will continue to share the same site, even though the adoption of older buildings is not necessarily ideal for children with complex needs. From a basic perspective, I am thinking about safety and windows that need to be high up. There is a site behind the school that could accommodate a purpose-built, dedicated school building and school grounds for children with specific and complex needs.

I would welcome a statement on this. The school communities feel they really need an appropriate site, staffing, supports and a school.