Ar dtús báire, ní aontaím in aon chor leis an Teachta. Ag déanamh áiféise atá sí. Má fheicimid ar an scéal ó 2021 amach, tá an uimhir SNAs sa chóras agus sna scoileanna ar fud na tíre ag méadú bliain i ndiaidh bliana. Tá an méid infheistíocht ag méadú chomh maith, bliain i ndiaidh bliana. Is léir, maidir leis an Rialtas a bhí againn roimh an olltoghchán agus an Rialtas atá againn anois, is é an meon atá againn ná i bhfad níos mó infheistíocht a chur isteach do leanaí le riachtanais speisialta. Sin bun agus barr pholasaithe agus aidhmeanna an Rialtais.
Sentiment score: -0.14
I understand where the Deputy is coming from. She speaks of cynicism. She personifies cynicism in her approach to politics and issues. She does not deal with them substantively or in any considered way. The bottom line is this. If we take special needs assistants alone, in 2020, there were 16,000 special needs assistants. Starting next September, there will be more than 25,000 special needs assistants. The number has gone from 16,000 to almost 18,000 in 2021, 19,000 in 2022, 20,000 in 2023, 22,000 in 2024, 23,800 in 2025 and more than 25,000 in 2026. That is not cutbacks or pulling back. That is not taking special needs assistants away from vulnerable children. That is allocating more resources. It is the same across the board in terms of special education. Investment has been very significant over the past number of years. From a position where, prior to 2020, there were very few special schools and none at all in the previous five or six years, we have established 16 new special schools since 2020. Some 28% of the budget is now allocated to special education and we have up to 30,000 students in special classes and special schools. The investment made is very considerable and will increase. One of the reasons is that there was a significant increase in the number of children and young people identifying with a disability in the most recent census, as opposed to the census prior to that. It is a very significant increase. That is impacting on our schools and demand. We are correct in that we need to finish off the work that has been done on the redeployment scheme. A lot of work was done on that with all the partners and stakeholders in education. That will give safety and security of tenure to special needs assistants, as we did for teachers many years ago. There was a redeployment scheme in place for teachers. As regards the teaching allocation, as the Deputy knows, every September, depending on the numbers in a given school, teacher numbers will either increase, decrease or stay the same in that school. If there is a reduced number of pupils in September and the school does not meet a certain cut-off point in terms of pupil-teacher ratio, it loses a teacher. If it is above or at that level, it gains teachers. The same applies and has always applied to special needs assistants, insofar as the needs of children in a given school have to be assessed, and should be assessed, on an annual basis, because things change. Need either increases or it can decrease. That is logical and natural. What transpired here was there had not been a comprehensive review for quite a number of years and the National Council for Special Education embarked on one. In our view, from a Government perspective, we believe the building blocks should be in place first - the redeployment scheme, the workforce planning and a new circular, and in addition to that then, continued allocation of resources to a needs-based approach.
Sentiment score: 0.17
Ah, stop. The Deputy spends her time at it.
Sentiment score: -0.15
First of all, the Deputy has just articulated an empty soundbite - "a new departure". What does the Deputy mean by "a new departure"?
Sentiment score: -0.10
I am none the wiser as to the Deputy's new departure.
Sentiment score: -0.22
There is nothing to what she is saying. This is an opportunity to have a go; fair enough. That is what the Opposition tends to do.
Sentiment score: 0.21
What we are saying is that we are coming forward with the redeployment scheme and a new circular. I am open to discussion on the role of an SNA but the role of the SNA is primarily for the child, not the school.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Let us have these discussions-----
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-----which cannot be forever debated in empty soundbites.
Sentiment score: -0.20
The child comes first. Do not mind your "wow". The child comes first all the time. The Deputy is not in the Gaiety School of Acting now.
Sentiment score: 0.00
The bottom line is it is a serious issue for children-----
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-----and as far as I am concerned-----
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-----we must focus on allocation on a child-based approach and a needs-based approach.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Everyone on this side of the House is as familiar with the issues as Deputy McDonald is. She does not have a monopoly on it and she should not pretend she does.
Sentiment score: 0.04
First of all, as we have outlined already - I said it last week in response to Deputy Bacik - any additional SNAs that were identified by the council as being required by a particular school will get this in the context of that review, so they will get that. The funding is additional to the education budget and will not be taken from any other part of the education budget. It is not an initiative without a plan. The Government never signed off on this at a governmental level, and I would just make that point to the Deputy. The Government did not sign off on this in terms of the 550, and the scale and the impact of it. When the Government saw the impact of this, it considered it and decided not to go ahead with what was being proposed, and that there will be no reductions in the next school year, and that prior to anything happening, there is a redeployment plan, which, by the way, was sought by the unions - in my view, correctly so. Teachers have had that since the late 1980s. I think it was Kieran Mulvey who negotiated that, with others, on behalf of the teacher unions back then. If schools reduced their numbers, teachers could be redeployed to other schools. If children with special needs are reduced by a natural process, and move on to second level or whatever, the SNAs, rather than being made redundant, will be redeployed to another school as close as possible to the school where they operate. That is a good, positive thing. It is very positive and progressive. In terms of workforce planning, there is an issue, or perhaps not an issue, but we need to take care to protect SNAs and that they are not asked to do everything in a school. Normally, the process is that the school says it has such a cohort of children in the school who require care and support, and it will require so many SNAs. That gets reviewed or assessed by the National Council for Special Education, and it makes a deliberation on that. There is a process for doing that. It has a panel, which can hear appeals from schools. That is normal, and it has been happening. What has happened in the last two to three years is that only schools that submitted for an increase were considered by the National Council for Special Education. There was not an overall review. An overall review was initiated, but before the outcome of that was comprehensively brought to a conclusion, action was taken in terms of what happened with correspondence going out to schools and so forth. Out of that, many schools gained, and some would have stayed the same and will stay the same. There will be no reductions next year. We will have the workforce planning, which has to happen, and is a good thing. There is also a new circular, which will have some changes compared to the 2014 circular, and the redeployment scheme. It is only then that we should look at a review process. Again, that is with a view to having consideration of the children who need the support. They have to be uppermost in our consideration.
Sentiment score: 0.18
I will take responsibility for the fact that well over 8,000 additional special needs assistants have been allocated to our schools since 2020. Let us have a sense of perspective here. Less of the rhetoric and the doomsday language.
Sentiment score: 0.00
I did not interrupt the Deputy. I would appreciate if I had the same opportunity. Well over 8,000 additional special needs assistants - that is not cutbacks, that is expansion, at an exponential rate. There is huge, growing need. We need to analyse that and reflect on it. That is why we are bringing a therapy-based service into our schools. That is an important intervention and I think one of the more significant decisions that this Government has taken, that there will be a therapy-based service in all our special schools and then moving into the mainstream schools. Because SNAs will not be able to do everything, and let us not pretend they will be able to do everything, as has been suggested by the Opposition.
Sentiment score: 0.34
Yes, you have.
Sentiment score: 0.40
I am very clear about this and very focused and I have a very clear idea because I have been working on this all my political life, so I know a fair bit about it. What I am simply saying is that we need additional supports, but we need to have multidisciplinary supports, in my view, in our schools, to help children in a more comprehensive and holistic way.
Sentiment score: 0.89
When the Deputy says "change the approach", the approach has been of expansion. We have gone from 16,000 to 25,000-plus. Is the Deputy saying we should change that approach? I am not clear when she says we should change the approach. The Deputy said special classes were called into question. They were never called into question as a result of the letters that went out last week. We have 3,741 special classes - how in the name of God could they be called into question? Let us be factual about it. The number of special classes-----
Sentiment score: 0.13
-----has increased significantly over the past two to three years and five years. The Deputy should just go through the figures - they are objectively there. They increased dramatically last year and will increase I think by 300 more again this year. I do not know how the Deputy can credibly put that out there that somebody was questioning the very existence of special classes when we are increasing them exponentially. As I said, the census data indicates significant increases in the number of young people and children presenting or identifying as having a disability. I see the same is happening in the United Kingdom. There are pressures there also. We have to deal with that and that is why the percentage of the overall education budget, which is now €13 billion and growing, is very high and rightly so. We have prioritised special education. Last year, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, did exceptional work in a very short space of time to try to close the gap in terms of the number of children seeking places. All of us on this side of the House meet parents of children with special needs, always. I never stopped meeting parents of children with special needs. I accept they have to fight a very hard battle for services not just in education but more particularly in health. That is why we are bringing therapies into the school system. Ninety will be recruited this year. I made it a red line issue in the most recent election that we would have a school-based therapy service. I believe in a multidisciplinary approach to help children with special needs. That is something we will deliver on during the lifetime of this Government. I would have no issue in sitting down with members of the Opposition and working through some of these issues. We need to very careful when we say the role is too narrow. We really need to think that through. We need more special education teachers. There needs to be more modules in training colleges in respect of special needs. There has been progress in that regard. We have a very comprehensive view of what we have to do in terms of expansion but the question is one of increased investment, not decreased investment.
Sentiment score: 0.22
We do have an overall approach but there have been 8,775 new special needs assistants in the past five years since 2020, 16 new special schools in the past five years and a new therapy-based service in our special schools, and that will expand. Those are not words; they are facts. They are on the ground. That is what is going to happen. We have an overall approach. We have established a Cabinet subcommittee on disability to look at all aspects. Today, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, had sanction to begin a public consultation on the cost of disability. Yesterday, at the disability Cabinet subcommittee, we had a presentation in terms of a new transport support scheme for people with disabilities. We have a disabled person human rights-based-----
Sentiment score: 0.15
-----national strategy and we have had meetings with all of the organisations in respect of that. I have established a disability unit in the Department of an Taoiseach to have that overall picture of all aspects of the life cycle of a child or a person with special needs. It is very challenging, particularly in the health service side of it. That is why in the past number of years we took disability out of the Department of Health and created its own Department with the Department of children to have that overarching perspective on trying to improve-----
Sentiment score: 0.36
-----the lives of people with disabilities in the country from birth right through life itself.
Sentiment score: 0.00
First, in respect of the assessment of the need issue, we need a changed approach. An assessment of need is not required for many services. It is our view-----
Sentiment score: 0.16
I have three minutes. The Deputy started off with the-----
Sentiment score: 0.00
The Deputy started off by raising the issue of assessments of need. I was making the point that our view is that the therapists should be directed at providing services. That is the change that needs to happen in the system. That is why the Minister has brought forward legislation that is designed to do that and to release the resources to support children with special needs in a more direct fashion. That is the approach we are going to take. On the issue of special needs assistants, well over 25,000 will be allocated for the next school year. That is a significant expansion on the 2025 figure and on where we have been over the last number of years. That is a story of expansion. The school-based therapy service is a further addition to the special schools. For the first time ever, about 90 therapists will be recruited in a comprehensive way for special schools. Additional special education teachers are being appointed. Thousands have been appointed. There has been a dramatic increase in their numbers and in the number of special classes. Thousands of additional classes have been provided over the last number of years. An objective analysis or assessment shows this expansion and this increase in investment. That will continue. Parallel to that, we want to develop supportive services for teachers in mainstream classes, in special classes and in the system more generally. With regard to special classes, the ratio is well established and has been in place since 1998. It is one teacher and two special needs assistants for a class of six children. That is the ratio in the teaching schedule. That is accepted. On the allocation of SNAs more broadly, schools make submissions to the special educational needs organiser, SENO, and determinations are arrived at. These very often depend on the number of children requiring care and support in the school. Decisions are made and, if schools disagree, they can appeal those decisions. That is the structure. We are bringing in a redeployment scheme to give safety in employment to special needs assistants. A lot of progress has been made in this area compared with where we were ten years ago or even five years ago. That redeployment scheme was well negotiated. It will give the security required.
Sentiment score: 0.29
It is a team-based approach. Special education teachers are recruited-----
Sentiment score: 0.20
-----to deal with the very issues the Deputy has raised.
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Deputy, I did not interrupt you. I am not deflecting. You are not even listening to the response.
Sentiment score: 0.09
The minute I stood up, you started shouting back at me. Would you listen so we can at least have a courteous exchange of views? Special education-----
Sentiment score: 0.30
I think that is it.
Sentiment score: 0.00