Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to say how fantastic it is to have a Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion in this room to talk about dyslexia month. It is an acknowledgement of where we are. There is a lot of work to do but it is a commitment to where we want to get to. I cannot think of a better person to do it. Everyone has heard of dyslexia but I am not sure there is enough general awareness of what it actually is and the specific supports that people need. Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that affects reading and spelling skills and affects 10% of the population.

People come in all sizes and shapes yet we still very much live in a one-size-fits-all world. A lot of our work is to tailor to people's specific needs. To me, dyslexia is just another form of human diversity. We all have something different about ourselves. This is always about equality of opportunity. That is very much a principle that we need to strive for.

I know the Minister of State is fighting at the moment for budget allocation. This year, €2 billion, or 25% of our education budget, will be spent on special educational needs. That shows the commitment to change. I often come across parents and schools who have concerns. I want to recognise groups such as the Dyslexia Support Group in Dublin 15. It is a new group which is meeting for the first time, because of Covid, on 22 October, for a coffee morning in support of Dyslexia Awareness Month and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland. I thank Senator Lombard for arranging this debate and the information that we got.

Inclusive education is set out in the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004. It states a child with special educational needs shall be educated in an inclusive environment with children who do not have such needs unless it is not in the best interest of the child with special educational needs or is inconsistent with the effective provision of education for children with whom the child is to be educated. I do not think there is any disagreement with the latter. I agree that such an inclusive approach is what we want to achieve. We have a model for allocating special education teachers in mainstream schools that was introduced in 2017 based on the profile needs of the school. That allows the school to allocate support where it is needed and without diagnosis. The numbers speak for themselves. There are 13,600 special education teachers at the moment but we must accept that we are still trying to close the disconnect between where we want to get to versus what some children with severe dyslexia are currently experiencing. I am specifically talking about Dublin west. I speak to parents with children in the third percentile who get support from their special education teacher but still feel that the children are missing out on an inclusive experience because they have to leave their table or leave their classroom so much. That is an issue that we have to acknowledge. It creates a negative experience for children if they are feeling different and feeling left out. Not every child will feel that but among the parents I speak to, many of them do. We have to listen to parents who are happy for their children to have access to reading classes and reading schools should their children need it. They do not see a reading class or a reading school as a failure of inclusion, they see them as an enabler of inclusion in the long term. I know the Department has said that it no longer supports the opening of new reading schools or classes but it is disappointing to the parents and children in Dublin 15 who do not have access to either. There is a school there, St. Francis Xavier, in Roselawn that wants to open a reading class and there are parents who very much want that. The Department has said it is going to review that policy. Parents, schools, the Dyslexia Association of Ireland and the National Educational Psychological Service have said that in an ideal world, where teachers are fully trained and schools are fully resourced, reading classes and schools would not be needed. That is what the Minister of State is working towards. While we absolutely need to get there, we are not there yet. I hope that review will fall in the favour of parents who want the reading classes and schools.