What Ministers and Government have relearned over the past number of days is a lesson they should have copped onto long ago. You do not mess with children with special needs or with the people who care for them because they will fight tooth and nail to ensure the people they love have their rights protected. There is a familiar phrase that anybody who engages with families of children with special needs will have heard time and time again. We hear that it is a battle a day to secure what their children are entitled to, whether that is an assessment, treatment or the right class in the right school at the right time. One of the things that has been inspiring and that brought Government to the point of releasing its late-night press statement was that the response has not just been from the families of children with additional needs or from the SNAs who love those children so much. The response was from whole schools. Communities up and down the country stood with those children who needed support and forced the Government to make what should have been an embarrassing U-turn, although it appears the Government is not embarrassed because the Ministers are still defending the situation that led to this catastrophe in the first instance. Deputy Darren O'Rourke and others have very clearly set out what needs to happen to deal with the issues regarding SNAs. The Ministers need to heed that advice. They also need to bring a bit of accountability into their Department and ensure accountability from the NCSE. The responses we received to parliamentary questions in respect of special needs education are absolutely unacceptable. They give no information. When we get no information, it means the families get no information. Countless schools in my constituency still do not know whether they will have sanction for special classes come next September even though they have the space to cater for these classes, the demand for them and the utmost determination to deliver them. The blockage is with the Ministers' Department and the NCSE. There has to be a level of accountability. We now have some certainty regarding SNAs. That is crucially important but we need accountability across the board. We need to stop treating special education as crisis management. These are our children and our schools. They deserve more than that.

Sentiment score: 0.12