I believed the Ministers when they told me several times in this Chamber that they would work with me. I believed them when they said several times that they had the solutions. I believed the NCSE. I believed lots of people but that might be my political naivety. I am really disappointed. I have come to the Ministers several times both here and outside the Chamber, the committee has been on to them and I have submitted umpteen parliamentary questions. I have written letters pleading with them to do something on behalf of my constituents and people around this country, their children and the schools they work in. These people are coming to me because I am our education spokesperson. I have had the quickest grinds ever on the subject of how inclusive education works in this country. It is an omnishambles beyond belief. I do not normally get cross. I try to be very constructive. However, I really am pushed to the limits of my patience now. Those on the Government side constantly say that the Opposition does not put forward solutions. This is a solution. We have put forward several. I literally cannot ask the Ministers any more times for the things that need to happen. In September, we had an issue with appropriate school places. We did not have enough of them. In November, the portal was closed and no one figured out what to do for those parents who were promised they were going to be able to notify the parental portal afterwards. The portal was shut and they were not able to make that notification. We had to contact the Minister individually. That is not an appropriate use of her time. This system should work properly. In January, another Department announced that there would not be assessments of need in schools. I do not know how schools are going to figure out what support services they need. That was done without any consultation with any education providers whatsoever. That is also an affront to the Ministers' Department. Two things happened in April. Inclusive special education classes were announced. It is beyond me why those words were used. I do not know why someone would come up with that phrase. Does that mean that the rest of the classes are not inclusive? We then had the Relate document. It is an absolutely excellent document. It is not all bad news. I will give praise where it is due. The Relate document is excellent and that framework should be rolled out. It is now going to be rolled out to training for SNAs and teachers but through a "train the trainer" model. That was not decided in consultation with teacher unions or any other unions and it is also not acceptable. I welcome my lovely colleagues from Scoil Eoin in my own constituency. It is a mild general learning disability school. I believe the Minister has visited. It is an absolutely wonderful school. The fact that its designation is facing death by a million cuts and what will happen to those children is actually frightening. I listened to the Minister's speech in full. I was upstairs in my office. It was full of numbers, which is great. I like hearing numbers. However, I also think those numbers do not actually relate to the children behind them and where they are. I will ask one question. The portal was supposed to give the Minister a great deal of information. Did it actually tell her the needs those children had? If it did, has she addressed all of those needs? I hope she will tell me that it has. There is no point in collecting data and then leaving it on a shelf. With regard to those five inclusive special classes, is that specifically what those parents said they needed for their children through that portal? Therapists are going to come into schools in May, one month before the end of yet another academic year. They should never have been cut in the first place. I do not know whose hare-brained idea that was. The idea that children with disabilities would not have therapists is just beyond me. Today, the Taoiseach stood in his place and said the Save our SNAs campaign was a flawed campaign. What was flawed was the Government's approach to SNAs. The campaign has been fighting for years because SNAs were not respected. They have again not been respected. The Taoiseach has completely insulted a pile of people in this country. It is unfathomable. The reason they are so frustrated and that there is a difficulty with SNAs is that it has taken years for the Ministers' Department to get redeployment going, to undertake workforce planning and to get any idea of what the circular would be able to do. I asked the Minister if she would meet the group. She said "Yes" and that we could negotiate. I offered the NCSE. Deputy O'Rourke and I were part of that committee, and we asked if we could do it. We are handing the Minister stuff on a silver platter to make her life easier, so that intern can make the lives of those children easier. The EPSEN Act, which the Department reviewed last year, was written in 2004 and sat on a shelf for years. I want to mention two things that I thought were really heartbreaking over the last while. Visually impaired and blind students came into the committee last week. One young person told us that he had applied for his Braille books when he was in transition year, and he got them a week before his leaving certificate. They were his senior cycle books. That is how we are treating a child who needs to have Braille books. I am speechless. We are spending gazillions of euro. I do not even know the number. The Minister knows the number and she still has to go to borrow more money for the future next year due to the overspend the Department has. I know she is trying to do her best, but the reality is that it is not what is in the wallet but how it is spent. It is clearly not being spent properly if we cannot even get a child books in Braille for the leaving certificate. What is that saying to him as an individual? Is it saying we do not value him because we did not bother getting him his Braille books? It would not happen in another country. I recently met with parents of children with intellectual disabilities who are becoming adults and are going to leave education and go somewhere else. What I heard was that there is no vision whatsoever for those young people. I know they are going to be adults, but there is no vision for what they will do with their lives in the future. I met somebody from the Before We Die campaign this morning. I hope that campaign contacts every TD in this room and those who are not present also, and that we listen to them because waiting until someone dies and then figuring out what is going to happen to their adult child is just disgraceful. I am sure that the Minister and the Minister of State have not heard me this annoyed before because I tend to come into this House quite balanced, but today I am afraid I am not. I am not able to listen to the constant complaints from people because the system does not work. I thought the Minister would believe me, and I know that is what parents in this country thought. They thought they could believe the Government before the last general election or local election - any election - that it would get this right, but it has not, and it is now going to have another talking shop that asks people this, that and the other. The information and answers are there. The Government does not have to make everything up. It works in other countries, so copy and paste from where it works well. The education committee also went to Finland. We looked at what that would be like. There are so many solutions but, again, if we are not able to get it right for any child in this country, this is what the difficulty is. The Government has let people down. It has let people in this House down, it has let people outside this House down, and if there were another motion of no confidence, it would be about this issue, in my opinion.

Sentiment score: 0.04