asked the Minister for Health whether in view of the severe incapacities suffered by mentally and physically handicapped children it is proposed to establish residential schools throughout the country to enable these children to be educated to the best advantage and to enable them to take their rightful place in society.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Education of Handicapped Children.
13.
Where long-term hospital care is provided for children it is normal practice to incorporate in the hospital setting a special school to enable those children to pursue their formal education. The position regarding some physically handicapped children who because of improved medical care can now live outside the hospital environment but are still unable to attend the ordinary school is being considered.
In regard to the mentally handicapped children the residential services necessary are being extended as rapidly as resources available will permit and where such children are regarded as capable of deriving benefit from education the necessary schooling facilities are provided to enable them develop to the full their educational potential.
Is the Minister aware that in Waterford there are is number of children attending special schools who are at the same time inmates of a mental institution which caters primarily for adults and does he think that this is satisfactory in the year 1969?
I have already given particulars regarding the extra places to be provided within the next two years. Some 800 places are being provided for mentally handicapped children and some 600 places are being arranged for adult mentally handicapped persons. That will at least begin to break the back of the problem.
I beg to differ from the Minister. Fianna Fáil spent a lot of money building blocks of offices——
Has the Deputy a question to put?
——and that money could have been spent more profitably on helping the mentally retarded.