Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Senator Maria Byrne.

I welcome the Minister of State and commend her on her commitment to special educational needs. Her office is always available, as is she, and we are very grateful for that. I hope her legacy will include the reorientation of this system that puts the weight on parents and families to secure appropriate accommodation for their children instead of the State automatically stepping in. The experience parents have is upside down and it forces people who already have too much on their plates to fight for vulnerable children. They must compete for places in schools and undergo an arduous application process, with rejection after rejection. The planning and application process must work seamlessly in order that children will be guaranteed a place in their local community that is led by the SENOs. That has not, unfortunately, been the case in Dublin 15. It should not have to be led by the parents.

I will support this legislation like everyone else. While nobody wants to see it used in the first or the last place, it is necessary for schools that have not responded appropriately to the urgency and stress this causes families. The Minister of State's number one priority is to increase the numbers of special schools and special class places until every child in the country has a place in his or her community, and she oversaw the opening of 300 special classes last year. Moreover, as we have seen, July provision is not always being delivered. Nevertheless, the schools in Dublin 15, which I work with and can speak for, only want the best for their students. They are committed to inclusive, child-centred and rights-based environments, including for Ukrainian children who have been welcomed into the classroom, through responding to changing and growing special educational needs by opening classes or managing multilingualism and different ethnicities in a respectful and sensitive way. There is a disconnect between what the Department or the NCSE describes as “reasonable efforts” to support a school in making the required provision, on the one hand, and schools' concerns about their resources, facilities and supports, on the other hand. That gap between the NCSE and schools has to be bridged for the system to work and for us to avoid having to use section 37A in the first instance.

The Minister of State might comment further on Danu Community Special School, which she visited before the classes moved in and which Mr. John Kearney visited last week. We discussed this previously, but she knows about the demand there for a behavioural practitioner. I ask that such a practitioner be granted to Danu, which desperately needs it whereas other schools have one. When it comes to ratios, this is a system where the one-size-fits-all approach does not work. We need to examine those scenarios with SNAs, special classes and special schools where the ratios are not meeting the demands of the school staff. Moreover, on the site for Danu, we committed to a purpose-built, state-of-the-art building and the needs are only growing. Will the Minister of State please consider the urology site in Blanchardstown?