This matter deals with education. At the outset, while the Minister is here, I should like to highlight a problem that has arisen in third level education where people are pressing for statements about Government grants from students who are enrolling. A lot of difficulty is being caused because students cannot get such a letter. In fact, the county councils who look after this affair have not yet got a confirmation of results from the examination centre in Athlone. This is causing an awful lot of damage and worry to parents. Students who have to enrol cannot be guaranteed anything because the councils cannot give letters. Parents and students have enough problems without having this pressure on them.
Adjournment Matter. - Carlow Special School.
That does not arise on the Adjournment.
It is a problem that has only arisen in the last few days. So many students are involved in it that I felt it very important to highlight it. Students are enrolling now and the pressure is on them. The colleges should be consulted and told not to ask for things that cannot be given. I will return to this.
I am very grateful to the Minister of State for coming here tonight to deal with this serious problem as far as we are concerned in Carlow, the question of the school for the moderately handicapped. I should like to thank the Minister of State for the interest he has shown, which I know is quite genuine. He visited the school, St. Laserian's special school and he knows the conditions that exist there. At all times he has been very willing to help out. What I have to say is obviously not concerning the Minister of State at all so much as the decision of his Department.
I will outline briefly what the position is in Carlow. Back in the late sixties an application was made to have a school for moderately handicapped in the town. This was changed later to a school for the mildly handicapped. That, of course, is St. Laserian's special school, which has been a very good success, so successful that it is overcrowded. However, at the moment we have handicapped children who are regarded as moderately handicapped travelling to Kilkenny by bus. Those children have to spend a couple of hours going and a couple of hours coming because though the journey on a direct line may be about 24 miles they collect children here and there making it a much longer journey. Those children have enough difficulty in attending school and trying to cope with their handicaps besides having to spend so long on the journey. The first week they went back this year the bus could not travel on two days because of its condition. It broke down on another day. From what I can gather the bus, although we were assured it would be in good condition the second week, is in a deplorable condition. It has not got heating and for long journeys in the winter this is not good enough.
Negotiations have been going on for a long time. The parents committee work extremely hard in Carlow. They have even gone to the stage of drawing up plans which they presented to the Minister of State when they went on a delegation. To summarise, an inspector from the Department attended a meeting in Carlow with the parents of the children who are going to different schools and discussed the problem. There was discussion about a four or five teacher school but it was still a discussion. After that the parents sent on a list of the 28 children who were going by bus to Kilkenny. That did not include some who are moderately handicapped but who are in St. Laserian's in Carlow because the parents would not let them travel to Kilkenny. There is also a pre-school in Carlow called the Holy Angels and there are some prospective pupils there also.
As a teacher I know that there are certain things that one cannot be asked to do and one of them is that one cannot be asked to give confidential documents such as psychologists reports to people who have no right to them. That is one of the things the parents were asked to do, to more or less decide whether these children they were talking about were in the moderately handicapped range or not. Since the children they were going to be transferring were already in a moderately handicaped school it was completely unnecessary, in my view, to ask them for this. One way or the other the inspector heard the parents. I saw a report of the meeting and it was quite clear from all the parents who spoke that they were very anxious that the school be set up in Carlow. They said they would go on supporting the school in Carlow. What really brought the crunch on — this is why I am raising it here — is that, after all the negotiations, and I have left out all the details in between, a letter was sent from the Department which offered the facility of temporary accommodation in St. Laserian's Special School which was, more or less, to prove that the school could be viable. In my view, and in the view of the committee, this was the last straw because St. Laserian's is so overcrowded at the moment that the staff room is being used as a woodwork room, and the principal's office is being used as the staff room and the principal has no official room in which to work. To ask parents to send their children, as a kind of experiment, to a school where there was no classroom for them was patently absurd.
I do not know where they were supposed to set up the school if the existing school was already so overcrowded that the staff room was being used for a woodwork room and the principal's office as a staff room. Where were they going to set up the extra classroom or two for this experimental school? I do not want to exaggerate but when a school is overcrowded the only place one can have a classroom is in the yard. I do not know if somebody in the Department just went plain crackers or else they were treating the parents of this committee in Carlow with absolute contempt. The parents see their children going off on the bus every morning. Sometimes the bus breaks down and they come back. It has happened at 7 o'clock. I accept break-downs will happen. The parents have paid a woman at their own expense money every week to travel with these children. They are very serious about what they are doing and very genuine.
The final reply from the Department did not treat them as if they were genuine because they were asked to do what was impossible. I am hoping the Minister will have some good news for us in Carlow that will show us that his officials are very serious in what they are doing. As a teacher I have a good idea of what happens. We have had extensions to my school and I know that Departments cannot sanction buildings for fictitious numbers. I have done surveys and we have gone from a three-teacher to an eight-teacher school. I know the details of what goes on but a time comes when the Department must be asked to stop and be realistic in what they are asking parents to do. The parents feel very upset. Minister, I hope that you will have some good news for us.
If the rules of the debate in the Seanad will allow me I should like to say to Senator Browne that his concern about what he raised initially in relation to the problem of students will be conveyed to the Minister.
The Minister has said it anyway.
I should like to deal now with the subject matter of the debate and say that the educational needs of mentally handicapped children in the area of Carlow town are served in the main by two schools, St. Laserian's special school for mildly mentally handicapped in Carlow town and St. Patrick's special school for moderately mentally handicapped in Kilkenny. The latter school, which has been in existence for a number of years, serves a wide area including County Carlow and it has accommodation for both residents and day pupils. The day pupils are transported there by bus. St. Patrick's in Kilkenny is fully stafed and equipped for the needs of its pupils and, quite apart from the services provided by the Department of Education, has a range of services provided by the health board. I should explain that the incidence of moderate mental handicap is considerably less frequent than that of mild mental handicap. This means that schools to cater for moderately mentally handicapped children, if they are to be of a size suitable for the provision of a full range of services necessary, are fewer and further apart than special schools and special classes for mildly mentally handicapped. In fact there are 34 schools and seven classes for moderate mentaly handicapped as compared with 200 schools and classes for mildly handicapped.
The probability that a moderately mentally handicapped child lives close to a suitable school or class is, therefore, considerably less than for a mildly mentally handicapped child. The problems in regard to the transport of moderately mentally handicapped children to school are much more severe. Both the time spent in travelling and the cost of transport are greater. It is inevitable that some children live outside the range of daily transport, either because the time spent in travelling or the cost is excessive. Residential accommodation may be the only answer for such children.
There has been a growing tendency in recent years for integrated local education. It is for this reason that practically all new facilities for mildly mentally handicapped children in recent years have been in the form of special classes attached to ordinary national schools rather than in special schools. The seven classes for moderates mentioned were all started in recent years. Indeed, two were started within the last two years. The general intention is that children would be able to get their initial education as near home as possible, although as they grow older it might be necessary for them to transfer to larger and more central, possibly residential, facilities. The main problems in providing special classes for moderately mentally handicapped children is in finding enough within reasonable transport range to justify setting up a class.
The possibility of building a special school for moderately mentally handicapped children in Carlow was raised at a meeting on 1 February 1984, when I met a delegation of Carlow people, including Senator Browne, who has raised this Adjournment Matter this evening. I was sympathetically disposed to the proposal. The subject of additional accommodation for the existing school for mildly mentally handicapped at St. Laserian's was also raised. An outline submission for a special school for moderates, to be known as Dr. Cusack school, was received in July 1984. This was a rather ambitious plan for a school of 1,550 square metres, incorporating four double classrooms suitable for 96 pupils plus a number of other rooms. A staff of eight teachers was envisaged. Other facilities which would be a matter for the local health board were also envisaged. To put this in perspective, I might mention that St. Patrick's, Kilkenny, which serves, amongst others, the Carlow area, had a staff of seven and an enrolment of 69 pupils.
It was clear that the proposal would involve a considerable capital outlay and it would be necessary, accordingly, to get a clear idea of the number of pupils who would, in fact, avail of the proposed new school if it were provided. An inspector of the Department visited the area after the recommencement of school in September 1984 with a view to ascertaining the need for the school. He had discussions with the chairperson of the board of management of St. Patrick's, Kilkenny, with officials of the SouthEastern Health Board, with the person in charge of Holy Angels pre-school in Carlow town, with an officer of the planning office in Carlow County Council, and he also visited St. Laserian's Carlow.
His report was examined in the Department and it was considered that, on the basis of the facts then available, a separate school for moderates on the scale proposed could not be justified. It was felt that perhaps two classrooms attached to St. Laserian's and incorporated in that school would meet the needs. There was no clarity in regard to the exact number of children who would attend the facility if provided, so it was decided that a meeting of those interested, presided over by an inspector, might be held in order to get a more accurate idea of the numbers involved. In December I visited the area and was impressed by the local enthusiasm shown. I was favourably disposed towards providing some local facility in Carlow.
A meeting presided over by an inspector of the Department was held in St. Laserian's, attended by 40 to 45 people in February 1985. It was put to the meeting that the number of prospective pupils would be in the region of 36 to 46, but this was disputed. No clear idea of the numbers who would actually enrol emerged from that meeting. Following this, both the chairman of the board of management of St. Laserian's and the chairperson of the Carlow Parents and Friends Association seeking the new facilities for moderately mentally handicapped children were informed of the Department's view that the facilities for both categories of pupils should be in the one centre and were asked to furnish data relating to the potential enrolment in the new facility.
The latter association, which was the main proponent for the new facilities, replied and, in general, insisted that what they wanted was a separate school under a separate board of management, with four to five classrooms. The Department offered to afford temporary recognition to a facility pending experience of the enrolment as part of the existing school for mildly handicapped. The Department would, if the need were proved, provide permanent facilities at St. Laserian's. The chairman of the association replied that the proposal for temporary accommodation was unacceptable.
I have gone into detail to illustrate that I am not, nor is the Department, in any way antagonistic to the provision of reasonable facilities for moderately mentally handicapped children in Carlow. However, it is not practical to build a large and expensive independent establishment without having some assurance that the scale of the expenditure is commensurate with proven need. In the current case, there are already sufficient places available in Kilkenny and other schools in the area to cater for the moderately handicapped. There is no convincing evidence that there is a large increase in moderate mental handicap in the area.
The main argument for the provision of a local facility in Carlow is that it would cater for local children and allow attendance on a daily rather than on a residential basis. There are educational arguments in favour of this and there are also arguments in favour of a more integrated education than is possible when children are categorised in regard to handicap and educated separately. For this reason I am still in favour of giving the Carlow project a start by providing facilities, with the agreement of the board of management, on a provisional basis in St. Laserian's for the education of moderately mentally handicapped children. If and when numbers increase, the facilities can be improved and added to, if it is necessary to do so. This is the way most new facilities start — small at first, with growth coming later.
I would like to refer to the argument that some children currently being transported to Kilkenny have to undergo long and tiresome journeys. This is inevitable, due to the large catchments that have to be served in order to bring moderately mentally handicapped children to a school of any reasonable size. It should not be assumed that this problem will vanish if and when facilities are made available in Carlow. It would undoubtedly alleviate the problem for those in Carlow and the immediate vicinity. At the same time I must say that if an enrolment of 96 were to be achieved, as projected in the association's submission, children would again be transported over very long distances at great cost in time and money.
I am very interested in and anxious to provide facilities in Carlow. I am subject to advice from people who are experienced in the needs and demands of handicapped children and the associations dealing with them. There is a difference of opinion as to the need in Carlow town. There is no point in expecting the Department or the Minister of the day to spend large sums of money on facilities without first establishing the need for them. I am opposed to children whom we should be regarding as special children having to travel long distances. In the provision of a number of special classes in ordinary schools throughout the country I have proved that I am opposed to these children travelling those long distances. I appeal to Senator Browne to accept the recommendations of my Department that we provide a facility in Carlow at St. Laserian's school and in the future if the need arose we would establish permanent facilities there and examine the proposals embodied in the motion before the House.
The Seanad adjourned at 5.20 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 2 October, 1985.