Paul Murphy: Government Failing Children with Special Needs

The Ombudsman for Children has found that the State is failing children with special needs, and that means that your Government is failing children with special needs. It is particularly failing those children who do not have an appropriate place for September, where we are now at the very end of June. The response by the Government has been to that failure. Originally was this awful scheme for special education centres, thankfully dropped, and now an attempt to distract from the Government's failings by putting the blame on four particular schools, which were wrongly named. Thank you, Deputy, for your question. As you know, I have spoken already in relation to the Ombudsman for Children's Report, and I very much welcome the fact that he is now publicly published his report. The Department had a significant level of engagement with the office in order to make sure that he had the full facts, so that he could reflect that in his recommendations. I think it is important to point out that whilst the State may have failed in its obligations over many decades, the Ombudsman did acknowledge the progress that has been made by this Government in the last two years. I think it is important to say that. He completely acknowledged the investment of £2 billion, which is over 25% of the Department budget on special education. That amount is the same as the entire amount of the Department of Justice and is a recognition and an acknowledgement of the importance that is attached to special education. As you know, we have just yesterday published new emergency legislation, which will assist in terms of the Section 37 process. We have had a number of different measures that we have outlined over the last two years. The Department's geographical information system will continue to support a strategic and coordinated approach to the planning and delivery of SEN provision, which is the main point that the Ombudsman, to my mind, was making in terms of forward planning. That forward planning probably was not up to standard in the sense that we were in a difficulty in terms of trying to find placements and appropriate placements for a small minority, but an important minority nonetheless for this September. I am expecting that the emergency legislation will assist with that. He also made some points around NCSC training and those targeted and bespoke supports will continue as well. We have also, for the very first time last year, secured a commitment from the planning and building unit that all new schools going forward will automatically provide an SEN base, which is four classrooms in a post-primary school of 1000 pupils and pro-rata after that. Thanks. Minister, I want to ask if you will apologise to the four schools, all deaf schools, incidentally, that you named. You said that the decision to name the schools had been made because they were, quote, not engaging at all with the Department and were, quote, just ignoring correspondence. When the schools produced correspondence to prove that that was not the case, then your story changed, where you said then they were, quote, ignoring the import of the correspondence. A very different story from what you went public on. Will you apologise for naming the schools in the way that you did? Will you apologise for using these four schools as a scapegoat for the failure of the Government to deal with this situation, to prioritise children with special needs? Will you commit to actually providing, yes, the spaces in the schools, but also the resources in particular, in terms of staffing, to enable schools to actually provide the necessary education for children with additional or special needs? I know, Deputy, that this did not form part of your question. Nonetheless, I have no difficulty in responding to it. First of all, just to say that all supports and all resources will be given to all schools who we are asking or, should I say, requesting under the Section 37 process that open a special class. Again, I think it is important to point out that when you are talking about the Section 37 process, which is a transparent process, all schools are publicly named on the departmental website. That is the nature of it. It has already been used twice, as we know, in the past. Recently, we have initiated the process for the third time when the National Council for Special Education wrote to me, told me and informed me that there was insufficient, placements for children in Dublin. They are satisfied that every other placement around the country will be provided for. Therefore, we felt that there was no other option in circumstances where schools who we had targeted informed us that they were not going to be in a position to open a special class. I will go again, Minister. Will you apologise to the four schools? You attempted to name and shame them to distract from your failures and the department's failures. You put wrong information into the public domain, saying that they were not engaging at all and, quote, were just ignoring correspondence, when it has been proven that that is not the case. So, will you apologise to the principals, teachers, to the schools, and then we can put this distraction behind us and move on in terms of dealing with this crisis? In Dublin 24, for example, you have 17 primary schools with special education classes, and come September you will only have two post-primary schools. So, in general, the ratio is two point something to one, but in Dublin 24, it is very, very substantially worse. I think it is a real failure. I mean, it is good we are having the legislation this Friday, but why did it wait until all is about to go on holidays? We are a few months from September. Why hasn't the government been proactively planning for this, which is both directing schools and providing the resources for the schools to do it? Once again, I think it is important to point out that the majority of special classes that are opened in Ireland are opened without having recourse to the Section 37A process. The Section 37A process has to be utilised and the mechanism has to be triggered in circumstances where the National Council for Special Education and the Department are of the very firm view that a school has spare capacity to open a special class. If it so transpires that a school is compelled to open a special class, then they will be fully resourced and the staff will be given to them. It is important to say, Deputy, in the county that you live in, there are 435 special classes, 310 a primary and a post-primary 125. There are also 38 special schools. And the majority of those special classes would have been opened outside the Section 37A process. The government wants schools to volunteer in the first instance, but it is where they do not volunteer and where we know that they are in a position to open a special class or indeed a second special class, then we will trigger the Section 37A process. Real군. Replace members for the Section and the Section and Section 37A process. How will you make your system within copy and paste? No, I do think that they were lying. Soפ understand.