I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I will set out the position on behalf of Minister, Deputy Naughton, regarding the shortage of mainstream school places in Dunshaughlin, County Meath. The provision of school places to meet the needs of children and young people at primary and post-primary level, including children and young people with special educational needs, is a priority for me, the Minister and the Department. Preschool and primary school enrolments at a national level have been in decline for some years, which, in turn, is leading to a reduction in demand for primary school places in rural areas and many urban areas across the country. The downward demographic trend is now apparent for the first time at post-primary level. While the Department is aware of the enrolment pressures and demand for additional school places in areas like Dunshaughlin, it is important to note that enrolment pressures can be driven by a number of issues, including applications from outside the area and schools of choice. Notwithstanding the above, in some areas, demographic pressures and other factors are driving the requirement for additional school places. The Department's main responsibility is to ensure that schools in an area can, between them, cater for all pupils seeking school places in the area. In addition to school admissions, it is the responsibility of the managerial authorities of all schools to implement an enrolment policy in accordance with the Education Act 1998. The educational welfare services of the Child and Family Agency, Tusla, is the statutory agency that can assist parents who are experiencing difficulty in securing a school place for their child. The local service is delivered through the national network of educational welfare officers. The provision of additional school places can be required in a very small number of areas. This can be facilitated by a range of strategies, some of which may involve additional accommodation but also by optimising the existing spaces. Between 2020 and 2025, the Department has provided over €459 million in capital funding for Meath schools. Over this period, a total of 62 schools have been upgraded either through provision of a new school building, a large-scale extension or provision of modular accommodation. There are currently 14 school projects in County Meath under construction. Another six school projects will go to tender or construction in 2026 and 2027, and this summer, ten schools are approved to undergo works as part of the summer works scheme and the climate action scheme. In addition, since 2020, a total of 119 special classes have been opened in the county, 12 of which were sanctioned for September 2026. With regards to the Deputy's concerns in relation to Dunshaughlin, a number of active projects at primary and post-primary level are in progress that will increase capacity. These include a new school building in Dunshaughlin, which will provide post-primary accommodation for 1,000 students and six special education classrooms. This project is at stage 4. In addition, there is a new school building project in progress for Dunshaughlin Community National School, which will provide eight mainstream classrooms and two special education classrooms. This project is also at stage 4. Furthermore, a total capital ceiling of €7.55 billion for 2026 to 2030 was allocated to the Department under the national development plan. This is a very significant investment in our education and youth sectors and will help deliver on our commitment to have a world-class education system that supports every learner to reach their full potential. Our sectoral investment plan published last month sets out the Department's approach to prioritised investment in school infrastructure to ensure that every child has a school place and to support the overall operation of the school system and youth sector in terms of capital infrastructure. There is a strong focus in our plan on maximising existing capacity and prioritising project rollout to meet the most urgent needs, particularly in regard to special education and also areas experiencing huge growth in their student population.
Sentiment score: 0.23
I take the seriousness of the point the Deputy is making in relation to Dunshaughlin. He has outlined the challenges in an area with a growing population of students and young people. I will take the point the Deputy made on the national school that when that is completed, the project will need to move on. I know other parts of the country as well where there are significant challenges in meeting second level education demand in particular but also in the primary sector. I will go back and engage fully with the Department to ensure we do understand and there is a roadmap to try and facilitate every student. In regard to the number of places in mainstream schools, it is important that we have certainty on that. This month, there will be enrolment letters going out and whether they are accepted or not, that will add further pressure. I will take the point the Deputy has made and I will certainly report back to him with a further response.
Sentiment score: 0.23
The four issues brought to my attention prior to coming to the House concern St. Mochta’s, Monksland and Shelagh national schools and car parking issues at the new build for Ardee Educate Together primary school. The Deputy raised other issues that I might come back to in my closing remarks. I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The Department of education has invested a serious amount of money in the sectoral investment plan for the period 2026 to 2030, which involves a strong emphasis on maximising existing capacity and prioritisation of school building projects to meet the most urgent needs. From the total of €7.55 billion being invested via this plan, it is envisaged that approximately €5 billion will be used for project roll-out to support the delivery and modernisation of school buildings across the large-scale, additional accommodation, modular and annual September accommodation needs programmes. Over the course of this year and next, there will be construction work on some 10% of the school estate. These projects will, when completed, provide 57,000 additional and modernised school places. with a strong special educational needs focus in all projects. The first school referred to is a co-educational Catholic primary school under the patronage of the Archbishop of Armagh. It has an enrolment in the current academic year of 182 pupils, including two special education classes. The school submitted an application under the additional school accommodation scheme in 2025. The application is under assessment, and officials are in ongoing contact with this school. The second school is a co-educational Catholic school under the patronage of the Archbishop of Armagh. It has an enrolment this year of 139 pupils, including two special classes. The school applied for additional accommodation in 2022, and on foot of that application had modular accommodation comprising two special education classrooms and one special education tuition room delivered in May 2023. The third school is a co-educational primary school under the patronage of the Archbishop of Armagh. It has an enrolment of 82, including pupils in its special education class, which was established at this school in September 2024. In October 2025, the school submitted an application for additional accommodation for two mainstream classrooms, and the application is currently being assessed by officials in the Department. I can confirm that the fourth school has a major project for a new school building that was devolved for delivery to Louth County Council. It is currently at stage 4, construction, of the architectural design process. The Department is engaging with the local authority regarding a proposal on the provision of additional car parking spaces. Louth County Council has been and will continue to engage with the school authorities regarding this project. At a national level, primary enrolments are projected to decline by almost 100,000 over a ten-year period. Given the general downward direction of overall enrolments in the area, the Department's focus for the assessment of such additional accommodation applications will be to analyse the extent to which enrolments at the school and neighbouring schools are serving the local area in the first instance. We are looking carefully at all applications to ensure we maximise what we have in terms of additional accommodation for the four schools raised by the Deputy. Some of the schools are at the very start of the application process. I assure him that the Department is working through the applications and will be in contact with the school authorities shortly with further information.
Sentiment score: 0.18
I take the point. There is ongoing engagement. On the Educate Together-----
Sentiment score: 0.15
That project has been completed. As for the other two projects, one is moving through. Both of the applications were made in the autumn of last year. I will ask the Department to ensure there is a timely discussion with them. The Deputy made a point regarding school accommodation and children being located in buildings that are not fit for purpose. Children are in primary school for eight crucial years of their lives. We have to ensure that we have the best possible services available for them. The Deputy referred to movement breaks and so on. All of that is hugely important, as we all understand. I can assure the Deputy that the applications are being assessed. We are duty-bound to ensure that we are assessing them. We have to assess them to make sure we are doing the right thing. Some €7.55 billion will be put into the education system over the next number of years, and a huge amount of money has been spent on it in the past five years. That has brought the education stock up right across the country. We will continue to invest in education.
Sentiment score: 0.17
A script will be handed around, but I will deal with the issue without the script. I thank all Members for their engagement and the seriousness with which they are treating this issue. I take on board all of the matters that have been raised. I will talk about the policy first. Since the 2014 document, more than 12,000 extra SNAs have been recruited and are working in the system. We have expanded considerably. There is a view going around that we have gone back to the 2014 document and that this is where the cuts are coming from. However, the SNA workforce has expanded considerably over the period since 2014. I take the concerns of parents, schools and children on board. I understand full well the importance of SNAs. In every school community that I go into, I have said that we have built special education on the backs of SNAs. I acknowledge the enormous work they do. We have increased the SNA population by 45%, to 25,000, in recent years. The SNA workforce is hugely valued. I am constantly asked this week, "What is the pause?". The pause means that we have stopped in relation to the decisions that were taken and communicated to schools last week. To be fair to everybody, we have stopped all of it. In May or June, information on the allocation of SNAs would normally go out to schools. We brought that back this year because I firmly believe that we need to have earlier communication. We brought back the notification for families with additional educational needs to October. I firmly believe that we need to bring communication back to earlier in the school cycle. We want to communicate earlier, but we are pausing what was being done because we are looking at the totality of the issue of special education assistance. To speak to the Deputy's point, we do not want the schools to be in limbo. We want to make sure that they have certainty as soon as possible. We have had a number of intensive engagements over the past 24 to 48 hours in relation to this issue. We will continue to engage over the coming days. We will be bringing clarity as early as possible as to the steps forward. I take on board what the Deputies said. Deputy Boyd Barrett mentioned Johnstown and the cliff edge of the five SNAs being taken out of it. We cannot have that. We have to have a continuous enrolment and we have to ensure that the value that we have in the SNAs is following the children. We must ensure that the children with the greatest need and those who require the help have the SNAs. If they have the SNAs, it will allow them to flourish and grow within their school communities and to have better outcomes in life as well. Many people would not be able to attend school unless they had the SNAs. We need everybody on board. We need the Department, the school communities, parents, and unions on board and we need to have a system that everybody has faith in. One of the challenges that we are now tackling is the reviews. We should have been doing reviews every second year or every year so that schools would understand the role of the NCSE, there would be interaction with the school communities and families so that they would have better information. We have to make sure that we have confidence in what we are doing. Families and school principals have contacted me, and I have spoken to many of them in the past week in particular. I assure them that we will do the right thing by them and particularly by the children who need the support in schools.
Sentiment score: 0.21
The basis on which we are delivering special needs assistants is under the 2014 circular, which has allowed us to grow the SNA workforce by nearly 60%. It is a whole-of-government approach. It is a very serious issue for families and school communities. We are all engaged. The Minister, Deputy Naughton, and I have had multiple conversations and meetings over the past number of days and weeks, right over the weekend. We are engaging extremely carefully as to how we will proceed. We had a number of meetings this morning as well. The Deputy asked me to clarify a few points in relation to his meeting tonight. If a school has gone through an SNA assessment or gone through with the SENOs and it was clearly demonstrated that additional care was needed in that school, that has to be stood over. If the school demonstrates additional care is needed, we are about ensuring the SNAs are working towards that care that is needed. There was never any discussion that a school would lose its SNA immediately; it was always going to happen from 1 September, not now or at Easter or whatever. It was always within the school year 2026. That was very clear at all times. We are pausing it because there has been so much concern about the process. We have to be extremely confident in the process we put in place such that all school communities and education partners have confidence in it and that we can go forward with confidence in it. There was mention of the removal of diagnosis. We cannot remove that unless we have a robust process in place in which all education partners are confident. We are working on that currently. It will take some time to make sure we have a robust system in place. This is a significant policy change. We have to make sure we get it right. I assure the House and all Members that we are working extremely carefully with the National Council for Special Education, us as elected members and Department officials. We have seen a number of attacks of various different types over the past couple of days. I assure the Deputies that when we have this done, we will have it right. We take everything seriously. We understand the special needs assistants, the children, the families and schools.
Sentiment score: 0.26
I thank the Deputy for the question and will speak a little on the information I received from the Department. In relation to widows, widowers and the surviving pension, we have done some work on expanding the scheme for civil partners or cohabiting partners over the past while as well. The challenge is when somebody is widowed, a man or woman, they work and then get ill themselves, going from two incomes to one. Ordinarily, if they got sick, they would be entitled to illness benefit, with the PRSI paid. This issue has come across most public representatives' desks. We meet families who are doing the right thing and making sure their contributions are up to date. Often, the families have been doubly hit. A partner may have passed away, the person is on the widow's or widower's pension and maybe raising a family on their own and working outside the home, and then illness strikes. When we look for help for them, we find we are unable to get anything for them. That is very challenging. A number of cases have been raised in the House, in particular, over the past 12 months. The Deputy raised one case very eloquently last October or November when a commitment was given to look into the matter to see what could be done. If we look at this in its totality, where a widow or widower is getting the pension because their partner has passed away, the pension is based on the PRSI the partner paid. The surviving partner has contributed their own PRSI and is looking for illness benefit at a particular time. The PRSI contribution system should be able to cope with contributions from both partners. A number of senior Government spokespersons gave an undertaking to look at it. We need to be more proactive in relation to seeing if we can do something for families, even in the short term. I can think of half a dozen of cases where I assisted but was unable to progress the application. I will take the Deputy's concerns back. A commitment was given to look at this last autumn. I will ask that it be looked at again and I will relay the seriousness of the matter as well. The Social Insurance Fund is made up, the first instance, by PRSI contributions. We could make the argument that PRSI has been paid by the partner to generate the contributory widow's or widower's pension and PRSI has been paid by the surviving partner. I will ask the Department to have a look at this in more detail.
Sentiment score: 0.12
The Deputy mentioned the carer's allowance. The half-rate carer's allowance was brought in. Former Deputy Joe Callanan from east Galway and I put a motion before the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party many years ago regarding the half-rate carer's allowance. We had been banging our heads off a stone wall for some time but Séamus Brennan, the then Minister, accepted our bona fides, particularly as regards cases where one person on a pension was caring for an adult son or daughter. Illness benefit is paid for a short period. If it was the case that PRSI could be paid and that could generate a payment, it could not be done for the long term but maybe it could be done for the short term. I will take the issue back. I understand it. I have seen it with families and individuals who come in to me, particularly families who have had difficulties already because one of the parents has died. The surviving partner may be rearing a family or looking after a loved one at their most vulnerable time. The Deputy mentioned illness benefit. Illness benefit is only paid for a short period. That may be something we can look at. I will certainly raise the issue with the Minister, Deputy Calleary, and the Department to see if we can come up with any proposals.
Sentiment score: 0.12
I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. He has outlined a specific issue on the floor of the Dáil. I do not have the exact details of the case, but I will speak to it. If the Deputy could furnish the details afterwards, I will certainly do what I can to help. The woman the Deputy spoke about is doing extraordinary work. She has a 22-year-old, a 25-year-old and a 17-year-old. Looking at the sums the Deputy quoted, we seriously have to ask ourselves whether we are getting value for money. More importantly, are we getting the care for people that the State is paying for? That is the most important question here. In my time as Chair of the disability committee in the last Dáil, I met many families and saw the challenges they face on an ongoing basis. Since my appointment to my current role, I have sat on the Cabinet subcommittee on disability and we have had many discussions on funding mechanisms, the challenges that are there and the amount of money we are paying to private agencies to provide public care. The real challenge is determining whether we are getting the care required. We can talk about value for money after that but the most important thing is the care that is required. I hear the Deputy's frustration in speaking about that mother, the hoist, the oxygen and the other challenges. He has described young adults who have a multiplicity of very complex needs. What that mother is doing is a vocation for her. I do not have the full details but I will certainly take the details from the Deputy if he will give me them. We have a shortage of respite and residential spaces across the country. We are spending a huge amount of money. Again this year, the amount of money being spent on the disability sector has gone up by a huge amount to try to make sure we are doing the right thing by people with disabilities. There is serious engagement at Government level on the matter. However, we also have to be mindful of the existing system we have built up. Is that right for families? We must stand back and ask what we can get for €1 million. The figure the Deputy mentioned is extraordinary. Deputy Lawlor has outlined that woman's serious concerns about the level or quality of care. I will personally take up the matter. I will engage with both the HSE and the Minister on the Deputy's behalf. I ask him to forward me the details privately. I do not want to comment on the case publicly but I will certainly engage privately.
Sentiment score: 0.23
The case the Deputy has outlined is extremely disturbing. At the core is the care that is being provided and the concerns of the mother, who has a vocation, about the care she is getting. That is one side of it. The other side of it is the amount of money the State is spending and that figure of €74 versus €18.50. A lot of section 38 and section 39 organisations around the country have invested and provided care for people with disabilities for many years. They have provided massive value for money. Every cent they have is invested into either community facilities or the teams that work in them. People should not be financially benefiting from the care of very vulnerable people. The funding the Deputy has outlined has come up at a number of the meetings, as have privatisation and some of the organisations that are providing care and charging the State an arm and a leg for it. These things have come up because we need to get the best value for money. However, we also need a level of faith in the system and in the care that is being provided. We need families to have faith in that system as well. I will take up this issue. I will certainly engage with the Deputy on it because it is hugely important that we follow this up for the family the Deputy has mentioned, for the State and for other people who need the same level of care and who are experiencing similar engagements with private companies. I will certainly do that.
Sentiment score: 0.34