Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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370. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason there are no specialist therapies and supports available to special schools dealing with severe educational behaviour difficulties. [65355/25]

Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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372. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to list the number of SEBD special schools in the country and their respective staffing profile. [65357/25]

Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 370 and 372 together.

Special schools support children and young people aged between 4 and 18 years of age with the most complex special educational needs and ensure positive links are established and fostered between the home, school and other agencies for these students.

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) advise that there are seven schools with a designation of Schools for Emotionally Disturbed Children. However, it is important to remember that a number of special schools have diversified since they were established to enrol students from their local area with varying degrees of complex needs. This diversification allows children and young people to attend their local special school without the need to travel long distances so as to receive the supports they need.

The Programme for Government 2025 commits to the introduction of an Education Therapy Service (ETS). This service will begin in special schools and gradually extend to special classes and mainstream settings, ensuring that all children can access essential therapies in a timely and effective way. The allocation of €16 million in Budget 2026 will support the continued rollout of this service, including the recruitment of additional occupational therapists and speech and language therapists, along with the necessary resources and supports. This service, which will focus initially, on Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy.

These therapeutic services will provide therapeutic supports across a multi–tiered model working in a universal, targeted and individualised way to maximize every child and young person’s participation and potential in education.

This is a transformative initiative, one that will make a real difference in the lives of children and families. It is anticipated that the ETS will commence in 45 special schools at a later stage in the 2025/26 school year will be supported by a panel of 90 therapists comprising of senior and staff grade. The NCSE is currently preparing a large-scale recruitment campaign which is anticipated to go live in the coming weeks. Further roll out of the service will occur on a phased basis. The delivery of this support to the initial 45 special schools has been identified as a key benchmark in track progress, as will the subsequent rollout to additional special schools over 2026/2027 schools year.

The development and delivery of this service will be informed by detailed engagement, which is on-going, with our colleagues in the HSE and stakeholders and will build on the National Council for Special Educations’ (NCSE) work previously completed through the Educational Therapy Support Service (ETSS) and the School Inclusion Model.

In addition to the ETS, the NCSE have been developing an education -based therapy support service known as the ETSS. This service currently provides two strands of support to schools, Regional Therapy and Sustained In-School Therapy to both mainstream and special schools.

Sustained in-school support (SIT) is provided to schools for a defined period of 18-24 months in line with the School Inclusion Model. 22 schools in the Eastern region are currently availing of this service and 28 schools in the Western region will receive support under SIT from September 25.

Regional therapy support provides Teacher Professional Learning (TPL) with follow on/implementation support by NCSE therapists. The focus of this support is to build the capacity of schools and to embed the learning from TPL into their teaching practice, through In-school coaching and co-facilitation of interventions, strategies and resources, with a focus on whole school (Tier 1) and targeted/school support levels (Tier 2) of a multi-tiered system of support. Regional Therapy seminars is available nationally for the 2025/2026 school year.

My Department and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) are committed to delivering an education system that is of the highest quality and where every child and young person feels valued and is actively supported and nurtured to reach their full potential.

Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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371. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she plans to review the special school model and the related system of supports which are available in an inconsistent basis to such schools across the country; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [65356/25]

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.

In 2026, over €3 billion will be spent supporting children with special educational needs. It will ensure that specialist capacity continues to grow by providing 3,000 specialist places. The majority of these places will be available in special classes within mainstream schools, however, a number will also be made available in special schools. It will increase our special educational posts by 860 special education teacher and over 1,700 special needs assistant (SNA) posts. This will mean we will have over 46,500 professionals dedicated to supporting students with special educational needs in our education system. This is one of the highest annual increases in posts to date and is a firm reminder of this government’s commitment to supporting students with special educational needs.

Budget 2026 has also afforded a number of new initiatives such as funding for the roll out of the Education Therapy Service (ETS) which will begin initially in special schools, the introduction of extra special education teaching hours for post-primary schools to support coordination and transition efforts and indeed a special school package to support the unique challenges these schools face.

The Department of Education and Youth and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) will also, this year, look at the profile of existing special schools. This work will ensure children with complex educational needs can apply to their local special school and not have to travel long distances to access an appropriate education.

When a special school is established, there is an automatic allocation of a minimum of 1 teacher and 2 SNAs per class of 6 students but this is invariably increased based on the profile of needs of the students enrolled. Special schools are resourced by the NCSE based on an annual review of their enrolment and the profile of the children and young people enrolled in them. Schools may also apply to the NCSE for a review of their resource allocation. The NCSE will examine each request individually with consideration to each school's student profile.

My department actively engages with the representative bodies for special schools, in order to help to address some of these additional challenges these schools face over their mainstream counterparts.

Following close engagement with special schools, and awareness of the challenges facing special schools a number of new measures have been introduced to support special schools. Firstly, the appointment of new posts for administrative deputy principals in all special schools has been instrumental in assisting principals with leadership and management functions and to support learning and parental and community engagement.

Secondly, the allocation of 100 post-primary teaching posts to ensure a greater range of the national curriculum subjects can be taught to improve student progression and transition.

There has also been an increase in funding to ensure that the Summer Programme continues to expand for students with special educational needs.

In addition to these budgetary measures, my department is also working closely with the NCSE to further support special schools in relation to a range of issues relating to administration, curriculum and training.

My department and the NCSE will continue to support all schools including special schools to ensure we deliver an education system that is of the highest quality and where every child and young person feels valued and is actively supported and nurtured to reach their full potential.