Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 10, between lines 15 and 16, to insert the following: “Amendment of section 20 of Act of 2004

12.The Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 is amended in section 20(1) by the substitution of the following paragraphs for paragraph (b):

“(b) in consultation with the Department, schools, the HSE, Túsla and such other persons as the Council considers appropriate to plan and co-ordinate the provision of education and support services to children with special educational needs and to ensure that such planning and co-ordination is made transparent, and to ensure that such planning and co-ordination is made transparent to the public generally by the annual publication of a report detailing—

(i) relevant statistics and forecasting in relation to demand for school places for children with special educational needs,

(ii) the availability of places in a special class (within the meaning of section 60 of the Education Act 1998) in each school for students with special educational needs,

(iii) the number of students with special educational needs who travel outside of their school planning area in order to attend school, and

(iv) publish a projection and analysis of the number of places in Special Classes and Special Schools that can be reasonably expected to be required in each school planning area, in the subsequent September, and in September two years from that;

(ba) the report referred to in paragraph (b) shall be developed using all data and information available to it, including but not limited to:

(i) children with special educational needs in early years;

(ii) children with special educational needs in Secondary school;

(iii) data from the HSE and Túsla including diagnosis and assessment of needs and other relevant data;

(iv) population level projections;

(v) CSO data; and

(vi) all other sources the Council sees fit.”.”.

We want the NCSE to use all available data, such as CSO data, population projections, HSE and Tusla data, data on children with special educational needs and early years education, to produce an annual report that would be available to the public in order that we are not here in June, July or August each and every year having this conversation but, rather, that we wrap up the conversation by Christmas. That is what amendment No. 4 seeks to do, from Sinn Féin's point of view.