Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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796.To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to outline the current expenditure pre-committed to her Department for responding to demographic pressures and pay as regards special educational needs in each of the years 2025 to 2029, in tabular form. [32634/24]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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My Department will spend almost €2.8 billion on special education in 2024, which is 26% of the total annual budget for education. This is an increase of almost €1 billion, or 47%, since 2020. This includes a funding provision in of €2.3 Billion in respect of the pay for Special Education Teachers and Special Need Assistants.

In 2024, the number of special education teaching and SNA posts in our schools will increase by 744 and 1,216 respectively to deliver up to 2,700 new places for children with special educational needs. From 2024, we will have over 41,500 qualified and committed people in our schools who are focused wholly and exclusively on supporting these children. Almost 1,300 new special classes have been sanctioned over the last four years and for the coming school year, there will be over 3,000 special classes operating in primary and post-primary schools. Seven new special schools have been established in recent years, and another four special schools will open in Meath, Kildare, Wexford, and Limerick for the coming school year.

There will be more special education teachers in our schools in September 2024 than ever before – an increase of 1,000 from 2020/21 school year. This is in addition to a significant reduction in class sizes and the pupil teacher ratio at primary level over three previous budgets. This means, more than ever, our mainstream schools are better supported to meet the needs of children with special educational needs.

In terms of future resourcing of special educational needs supports, for 2025 and onwards, Budget 2025 will provide a total government expenditure increase of €6.9 billion or 6.9 per cent. This will result in total available current expenditure resources of €90.9 billion. The funding available to the support special needs education will form part of Budget 2025 negotiations. While not wishing to pre-empt the outcomes of any future Budget negotiations or fiscal parameters agreed by Government, the Department of Education will continue to seek and prioritise the funding required to meet the ongoing need as part of the annual Estimates process.