Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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230. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if schools from the Dublin 15 area applied for inclusion in the project for bringing specialised therapists into schools and preschools, as announced on 6 July 2018; if so, the reason for their omission from the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37645/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I recently announced that a demonstration project to provide in-school and pre-school therapy services will be introduced for the 2018/19 school year.

The project will be managed and co-ordinated by the National Council for Special Education.

The demonstration project is being developed by a Working Group which includes representatives from the Departments of Education, Children and Youth Affairs, Health, and the Health Service Executive.

The purpose of the project is to test a model of tailored therapeutic supports that allows for early intervention in terms of providing speech and language and occupational therapy within ‘educational settings’. This innovative pilot will complement existing HSE funded provision of essential therapy services.

The project is taking place in the Health Service Executive (HSE) Community Healthcare Organisation (CHO) 7 Region of South West Dublin, Kildare and West Wicklow.

This region has been selected to ensure that the pre-school and in-school therapy model can be tested in both urban and rural locations and with a suitable mix of various types of schools and pre-schools. The schools selected will therefore be from this region.

75 schools, including a representative sample of primary, post primary, and special schools will take part in the project.

An additional 75 Early Years pre schools will also be included in the demonstration project.

150 school and pre school settings in total will therefore participate in the project.

Of the 75 schools selected, this includes:

- Schools with significant levels of educational disadvantage.

- A mixture of urban, large, and small schools.

- Schools with high levels of support needs as identified under the new special education teaching allocation model.

- Mainstream schools which have special classes

- Special schools with significant levels of therapy support needs.

- Schools of various types including Irish medium schools.

Pre-school settings associated with primary schools participating in the project are being included in order to provide for therapy interventions to be made at the earliest possible time and to create linkages between pre-school and primary school provision.

The list of the participating schools and pre schools has now been published on my Department's website.

As the pilot project is taking place in the CHO 7 HSE region, only schools from this area could be selected for involvement in the project.

Whereas Dublin 15 is in West Dublin, it is not part of the South West Dublin area which forms part of the HSE CHO 7 region. This meant that, unfortunately, schools from the Dublin 15 region could not be included at this time.

Decisions in relation to the extension of the service to other areas or Counties, or to extend the service nationally, will be taken following an evaluation of the current pilot phase.