Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will address the Senators who are in the House as opposed to going through the contributions from the other Senators. Senator Murphy raised some of the points already raised by other Senators.

For Senator Dolan's information, there were 45 different summer schools in Galway looking after 726 children. In Roscommon, there were 11 looking after 249 children. We would love to see that number increased next year as well. The Senator mentioned targets. We have a large number of students who do home-based summer programmes and the target is to move these students to a school-based scheme. The Senator also asked about my vision and it is a very simple one. We want all children who need the programme to have access to a school-based programme. That is critical. On staffing, we have been engaging with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to see if we can engage students from other disciplines as well as students we have already opened it up to. That could be beneficial for everyone taking part - for the student, the school and the children. The bottom line from what all Senators said today is that we all want the same thing. The Department, the Minister, Deputy Foley, and I all want the same thing. It is just to make sure we deliver it.

The review that was mentioned is critical. It is the first time we have done a review and it gives us an opportunity to listen to every single person who is involved in special education - parents in particular but the voices of the children, the special education consultative forum and really everybody. If there is something we are missing, we can try to change that and make sure we address it so we can get more participation into the future.

It is interesting the Senators who are here, such as Senators Carrigy and Murphy, are all advocates for special needs, as has been mentioned. It is no accident that the people speaking here today are people who are particularly and genuinely interested in this topic. I know some of the other Senators have left the Chamber but they are all interested.

I thank Senator Carrigy for his acknowledgement of the early announcement. It has been an extremely good thing and a very positive development. As the Senator said, schools can plan now and they have more certainty as to the funding. I looked back on last year and we did not announce it until the beginning of May. Having the announcement in October makes a radical difference. I take the Senator's point about the details being provided in January, and if there is information that is needed, we can make it known earlier. That would be a good thing to do.

The Senator mentioned an important point which comes up on occasion about making school-based programmes mandatory. Another Senator mentioned this as well, possibly Senator O'Loughlin. The difficulty with that is the length of the school year is already set. The terms and conditions are set and you cannot unilaterally or arbitrarily change that. That would take much wider discussions across the school community. I remember talking about it before and the primary schools have 183 days and the post-primary schools have 167 days, so we cannot just change that. One of the things we did do was to offer double pay for them to extend the school year via the summer programme as an incentive to give them that assistance. As the Senator knows, there is flexibility now and schools do not have to do it in July, it can be August or whenever. I wanted to address that with the Senator. He also mentioned occupational therapy or speech and language therapy students, and they would be very welcome to participate in the summer programme. Some nurses can as well and they would be welcome, as would other students from healthcare backgrounds. All of these things are being worked on and it is important to stress that.

I thank Senator Conway for his words and he is a great advocate for this area. He mentioned older siblings and a parental role in the summer provision, and I think that is good. Senator Carrigy mentioned the innovation done in Kildare with different schools so that at least one of them was providing this.Again, these sort of models and pilots can be initiated. Why should older siblings and parents not have a role as well if it is something that they want? We engage with the National Parents Council, which sits on the Special Education Consultative Forum, and others to make sure that we do everything we can.

Suffice to say, I very much welcome all of the Senators' comments. In response to Senator Carrigy's point, there were 15 schemes in County Longford this summer, benefiting 467 children, and 19 in County Westmeath, benefiting 230 children. I do not have the figures here for Senators Conway or Murphy , but I can get them to them.