Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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88. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she is aware of the planned closure of an autism class at a school (details supplied), despite sufficient interest in enrolment for the 2025/2026 school year to warrant two autism classes; if she will instruct the NCSE to reconsider its proposal to close the class and review the individual enrolment cases; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33164/25]

Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)
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This government is fully committed to supporting children with special educational needs to fulfil their full potential and the Programme for Government makes a number of commitments to deliver on this objective. The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has responsibility for coordinating and advising on the education provision for children with special educational needs.

My department works closely with the NCSE on the forward planning of new special classes and additional special school places. Building on successive budgets, Budget 2025 secured funding for up to 400 new special classes in mainstream schools, and an additional 300 special school places for the 2025/26 school year. This will deliver 2,700 new places for children and will bring the total number of special classes nationwide to over 3,700. 36 of these are in County Sligo of which four are new for the 2025/26 school year.

As the deputy is aware special classes are sanctioned based on known demand in local areas. This is important so that students are not required to travel long distances in order to access a special education placement. The NCSE has confirmed that children in the area known to be seeking a specialist placement have been placed in classes within their local areas, as a result there is insufficient demand in this school's local area to keep this special class resourced for the 2025/26 school year. The NCSE have discussed this matter with the school at local level. The NCSE will continue to monitor the situation and will continue to sanction classes as required to meet known demand.

My department and the NCSE are committed to ensuring that sufficient special education placements remain available for children with special educational needs.