I thank you, a Leas-Chathaoirleach, for giving me the opportunity to raise this question and I also thank the Minister for coming to reply to this debate.
In educational terms, we have been building tower blocks on crumbling foundations. We continue ploughing money into third level education while largely ignoring the needs of primary school children, although I hope that some of the proposals in the White Paper on Education will help to reverse that situation.
As somebody once said, all politics are local. The situation in Rathcormac, Bartlemy, Ballincurrig and Leamlara is a microcosm of the situation of many of our primary schoolchildren as a whole. Of the 3,512 pupils attending national school in these communities, 64 have special needs of one sort or another. Unless we provide those 64 children with the remedial teaching they so desperately need, we will have failed them, their families and, ultimately, ourselves.
It has been estimated that around 15 per cent of pupils nationally are in need of remedial services. That figure translates into around 6,000 remedial teachers, nearly double the number currently employed. At a time when increased resources are being injected into third level education, we must also ensure that children in primary and secondary schools are not prevented from achieving their full potential because of lack of resources.
For years children with learning difficulties and their families have been fobbed off with vague and unfulfilled promises to expand the remedial services. The Minister for Education has put flesh on the bones of these promises and I particularly welcome the establishment of a task force to implement the findings of the Special Education Review Committee. The recently published White Paper proposes that each school will be responsible for drawing up a policy of student assessment and that the school physiological service will be expanded to support teachers in this task.
One of the problems faced by children with special needs in the past has been the lack of co-ordination between relevant Departments and agencies. I welcome the White Paper's proposal to establish a national database which would register each child with a special disability, giving the education board in each region special responsibility for these students in co-operation with the health boards. These proposals represent a huge advance in the provision of special needs education, but as yet they are merely aspirational and their implementation may come too late for the 64 children with learning disabilities in Rathcormac, Bartlemy, Ballincurrig and Leamlara.
There is a grave danger that pupils who fail to receive appropriate remedial teaching will fall through the gaps in the education system altogether and they may eventually wind up on the rolls of the long-term unemployed on the margins of society. I urge the Minister to give priority to the expansion of remedial services at both primary and secondary level and urge her to start with the 64 children in my area who need help to realise their full potential.
