Vol. 490 No. 7
17 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science if he has satisfied himself with the present procedures adopted by the State in order to vindicate its duty to provide primary education to all children, as they are applied in the case of children with severe disabilities. [11101/98]
As Minister for Education and Science I must have regard to the constitutional rights of parents as the primary educators and carers of their children. It is a matter for the parents of each child to decide whether they wish to avail of the formal education service offered by my Department. In some instances, particularly where serious disabilities are concerned, parents may choose for clinical or other reasons not to avail of a formal education service. However, I assure the Deputy that my Department is prepared to respond positively to any request for the provision of an education service for any child, including children with serious disabilities.
There are currently 78 special classes for children with severe or profound mental disability. These classes provide a specially tailored education service to approximately 460 pupils. A number of applications for the establishment of further special classes are currently being considered by my Department.
The Education (No. 2) Bill, 1997 as published contains statutory safeguards for the rights of children with disabilities. In particular, on the enactment of the Bill, boards of management will have a statutory duty to ensure that the educational needs of children with special needs are provided for. Following publication of the Bill, my officials and I have had consultations with a wide range of interests in education, including parents of children with severe disabilities. I am considering proposals for amendment to the Bill on Committee Stage to clarify areas of concern to such parents, to address, as far as practicable, their concerns and to further strengthen the rights of their children.
Does the Minister accept that the constitutional rights of children with a severe or profound disability must be respected, regardless of the cost and that the issue of expense must not be the key factor?
Yes.
Why, in the Bill to which he refers, is continual reference made to "within resources" when these rights are stated? Is he not seeking to circumscribe with qualifications what are constitutional rights? Will he refer to the comment made in the High Court judgment on the Paul O'Donoghue case that Ireland has lagged behind in this area and that we should not, to paraphrase his reply, wait to respond to a request for provision, but should rather provide early intervention and assessment and the provision of information to parents to enable them make proper choices?
Committee Stage of the Education (No. 2) Bill, 1997, will be taken next week. The Bill does not undermine the constitutional imperative of providing an elementary education to all children within the compulsory age. No legislation could be passed by the parliamentary draftsman or be presented to the House if it was predicated on the principle of somehow qualifying a constitutional right. I will elaborate further on that on Committee Stage and, as I suggested in my reply, we will introduce amendments to clarify the position. In no circumstances does the Bill qualify the rights to an education of a child with severe or profound disability.
We will respond proactively in terms of making services available to any request we receive regarding the provision of special classes or from parents regarding children with special need. We are catching up with an historic deficit. It was three years before the Supreme Court passed judgment in the Paul O'Donoghue case while the deliberations which led to the special education review committee report commenced in 1990.
We are working with other Departments on this. For example, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is currently undertaking the implementation of a recommendation that emanated from the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities. This called for an integrated approach and a disability support service to ensure an integrated response in terms of advice, counselling and guidance and in terms of making parents aware of available facilities to meet the needs of all children with disabilities.
In the past, the Department and the State were too dependent on the service providers for information on the needs in the community. I have experienced that this year. Often, the needs of parents were not brought to the attention of my Department as readily as they should have been. In those instances we took immediate action in terms of providing additional classes and, in some instances, additional schools, which will be ready for next September.
The Minister says "we will respond to requests". Does he not accept this is in conflict with the spirit of the O'Hanlon judgment, which put an onus on the Department to anticipate rather than respond? Are the number of court cases pending — another is reported in the newspapers today — not a symptom of serious problems within his Department? Is it not most unsatisfactory that so many parents feel the need to contest their rights in court and is it still the case that as many as 4,000 children with disabilities in mainstream schools have no support services?
There are not 4,000 without any support services. The situation outlined by the Deputy is an indictment of previous Governments. He was a member of a Government which was in office for approximately three years and which lacked a proactive approach to this matter.
The Minister is not proactive; he is merely responding.
I have been proactive in the past ten months in terms of addressing a number of key issues pertaining to special needs.
Today's court case in not——
On the question of court cases, I have identified a number of the issues involved. I do not want to say much about cases before the courts, but I have made proposals to the parties concerned in terms of the provision of services to the children involved. However, certain elements of many court cases involve other key issues pertaining to the lack of provision in previous years on which the parents seek adjudication.
I do not believe any parent should have to go to court to secure an education for his or her child and I will do everything I can to prevent such an occurrence. That is why I am taking a number of steps with regard to schools for autism and other measures to improve the services and resources available to children with special needs. On taking office I discovered that we expected the parents of children with special needs to raise 15 per cent of the capital costs of providing a special school or of providing extensions to their schools. I immediately stopped that and brought provision up to 95 per cent. I want to do more than that in the current year in terms of special schools. I also want to provide additional resources to special classes attached to mainstream schools. In this regard, I refer the Deputy to the announcement last week on the IT 2000 package, which contained clear discrimination in favour of children with special needs, be they in special schools or special classes in mainstream schools, in terms of the provision of information technology, computers and so on. We will be very generous, as we should be.
Since the Minister took office the Disability Federation of Ireland reports that there is no infrastructure for supporting inclusion, no public schemes for support services and no entitlement to those services.
We have more than 1,200 remedial teachers in education. We need more resources. While progress has been made since the establishment of the special education review committee, we have some distance to go. I have given this area of education top priority in terms of allocation of resources.
