Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to be here for statements on education. In recent months, I have worked extremely closely with the Minister to deal with the many challenges we have faced in terms of special education and school places. We have worked with the NCSE and the Department during that time to ensure we will have a place for every student come 1 September. There are some challenges still ahead, but we are very committed to making sure we have the places for them.

During the current school year, parents were asked to make contact with the NCSE on or before 1 February if they wanted additional support for their children. We moved that back by four months. The cut-off date is 1 October for the 2026 school year. This was chosen in the hope we will have school places for children with additional needs and certainty for their families prior to Christmas. That is the least we can do for vulnerable children with additional needs, and we welcome the decision to do that.

In recent months, I have travelled the length and breadth of the country. I have visited special schools, special classes and mainstream classes. I discovered the amazing work that is being done by teachers, SNAs and the wider school leadership. Breifne College was mentioned. I visited it as it was closing two or three weeks ago. I am really taken by the serious commitment on the part of school leadership to deliver an education system that is inclusive and has the child's benefit at heart. School leaders who are embracing special classes and additional supports for children are quite amazing. We have a lot of work to do on the special classes in primary schools. The primary school education system has really embraced special education. We now face the challenge of ensuring we have places for those children as they transition from primary to post-primary education. Senator Curley mentioned his town of Loughrea. We have challenges in every part of the country with that because some students will be able to get through primary school but the transition from primary to post-primary will be difficult, so there needs to be a great deal of work, and a great deal of understanding around children's needs, to ensure they are accommodated throughout the length and breadth of the country.

I think of the special needs assistants who have done amazing work and been the foundation of special education over the past 20 or 25 years. We have gone from having no special needs assistants in the education system to having 23,000. They have embraced their job. When one meets them in schools, they talk about the commitment they have and their love for the children they are looking after. One can clearly see that.

We are embarking on providing therapists to special schools and special classes again. We will be rolling that out from September of this year. A decision was taken by the Government on Tuesday, I understand, and a number of discussions took place in the Cabinet subcommittee on disability in February. A large volume of work has been done by the Department of education, the NCSE and everybody else to ensure we can roll it out. Getting therapists back into special schools will be transformative for children, but it will also give great support to the teams working in the special schools because they will learn from the therapists. We have a lot of work to do across government, not just in the Department of education, but also in the Department of further education, to ensure there are more therapists coming on stream and that we have extra college places in September.

There is a role within the education system for assistant therapists. We all know that some of the practitioners in the education system, especially on the special education side of it, are almost therapists themselves at this stage. It is important that we look at the assistant therapist's role and how it will be rolled into the system. Any of us who are close to the education system know quite well that some of the special needs assistants working in it are skilled way beyond what they have on paper. We need to look at ways of ensuring they are brought further into the system.

Over the past five years, the capacity for special education has doubled and the National Council for Special Education has got many more teams on the ground. This year, we have 120 special needs assistants. They are embedded into the system. As the years go by, we will be able to get better outcomes and more certainty for families. It was last September that those 120 SNAs were put into the system. We should be able to get better information.

We also need to break down barriers between the Departments of Children, Disability and Equality and Social Protection to ensure information is sent. We have all heard the dreaded words, when we are making representations or dealing with some issues, about GDPR and the silos within government. We have to break down the silos within government so the whole of government understands quite clearly the need out there in society.

We will have over 400 extra special classes throughout the country this year. We will have five additional special schools. They are in Belmayne and Lucan in Dublin, what will be known as the Carraig na bhFear school will initially start at a site in Fermoy this year before moving to Carraig na bhFear later, another will be in Nenagh in County Tipperary and another will be in Castleblayney in County Monaghan. I believe there will be 18 places in that last school to start off. These are huge initiatives. They need an awful lot of support from the NCSE, the Department and ourselves because they are taking on a very important role in society. All those who are working right across the education system are fantastic, but the staff in special schools are superhuman because of the need they are meeting.

A number of issues relating to foster care were raised. Even yesterday, we had a meeting with a principal who raised a number of issues with me concerning one or two children. We can take fierce pride in the education system that has developed in Ireland over the past century and the amount of progress we have made, especially over the past 50 or 60 years, but there are students who are outside it and who fall through the cracks. We will be measured on how good a safety net we have under them. Senator Keogan spoke about foster care, which is something I will reflect on. We will look at it and make sure we are doing right by children who are going into foster care because life is challenging enough for them. I will certainly look at that. We were given information yesterday about a student who was outside the school system and had escaped the system of the State at seven and a half or eight years of age. We all think there are excellent checks and balances in the system, and by and large there are. There is a fantastic inspectorate within the Department and there is the NCSE. However, there are always some challenges and we are going to have to ensure our education system is bringing everybody together.

Regarding the many challenges we have in society, such as antisocial behaviour, which has been discussed here and in the Lower House in recent days, the education system is crucial. Many of our predecessors in the Houses understood that the way out of poverty was to ensure we had a proper education system, and that they did. Donogh O’Malley was mentioned. In the decades before, that the vocational education system was rolled out and one Minister opened 129 schools in one year in the early 1950s. I was in Scotland recently looking at its education system, particularly the special education system. While it has a great system, the cabinet secretary for education said that she would not start with what she was doing if she were us, given the challenges Scotland faced and the system we had been developing for years.

We have to ensure we are bringing everybody with us within the education system. It is the great enabler for getting people out of poverty traps and the endless cycle of poverty. We are going to have to ensure that we have a fit-for-purpose system for the most vulnerable, whether they come from very disadvantaged backgrounds or require a challenging amount of care. Sometimes, we fall short of that. The figures show we are doing very well. The OECD figures or any comparative studies will say the Irish education system is good, but we have to look at those we are not serving because if we do that right, we will have an even better system into the future. I have certainly put huge energy into my role in the past number of months. I chaired the disability committee during the previous Dáil and Senators O’Loughlin and Tully were members. We gained great insight into the challenges in the disability sector.

I will not speak all the way to 2.30 p.m.-----