Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 14 October 2020
14. Deputy Denis Naughten asked the Minister for Education the steps she will take to cater for the increasing numbers of special needs pupils at primary level; if she has assessed the impact of the curtailment of supports for such children; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29739/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraThis is a similar question to the one I asked earlier and so the Minister of State does not need to repeat the answer.
The Deputy should just read the question.
I prefer to avail of the 30 seconds to ask a question. I pointed out earlier how the lack of access to speech therapists is having a direct impact on the education not just of the children with a learning disability but of other children in those classes as well. What is the Government going to do to ensure that speech therapists are taken away from contact tracing and returned to doing their work?
The Deputy has raised two questions today, neither of which were in regard to the questions he tabled. Speech and language therapy provided by the HSE is slightly outside of my remit but nevertheless within the school inclusion model we have put in place a pilot project in 150 schools and we now have received investment to roll that out in 200 schools. We will be using speech and language therapists in respect of whom recruitment is under way. We will also be using occupational therapists and crisis and behaviour specialists as well. This will revolutionise the school setting for children with special needs.
On the recruitment of therapists, owing to the Covid pandemic many therapists were redeployed to the HSE. I reassured the Deputy earlier that from my perspective within a school environment the NCSE is allowed to recruit these therapists directly without having to rely on the HSE therapists who are I understand being taken up with contact tracing. I will raise the issue with the Minister of State with responsibility for disability and the Minister for Health. I am not privy to the minutiae of whether these therapists are still being retained in contact tracing within the HSE or whether the majority of them have returned to their work. I can understand why they were redeployed in the first instance but obviously we do not want it to be to the detriment of children with special needs who need these services.
Within the school setting, which is my remit, I can reassure the Deputy that the school inclusion model, for which we have received funding for over 80 therapists in yesterday's budget, will be expanded to other community health organisation areas, on top of the already selected community health organisation areas. We hope next year to cover another three and perhaps another three the following year, which would be nine in total. That is the ambition. It would be groundbreaking for children with special needs in the school environment and it is something I am determined to do.
I thank the Minister of State. I understand her remit. I have taken up this issue with the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health, the chief executive of the HSE, the Minister for Defence and, today, the Minister of State, who are the five people in authority across this area. I am making a very simple request, namely, that Defence Forces personnel or retired Defence Forces personnel be asked to do the contact tracing work, inquiring of people about their movements over the last number of days, such that therapists can return to providing front-line services to schoolgoing children. The service may not be provided in the school but these are schoolgoing children and it has an impact on every pupil in a class. Will the Minister of State, as part of the co-ordination that takes place across Government in regard to the disabilities sector, commit to ask that this action be taken immediately?
I can give a commitment that I will bring the Deputy's concerns to the attention of the Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities and the Minister for Health. I want to be clear in regard to the school inclusion model and the therapists within a school environment.
They are not in lieu of a service that should be provided by the HSE. They are a complementary service which should enhance the child. As I mentioned to the Deputy earlier, we can see from the interim evaluation we have got back from the pilot demonstration project that it has had a beneficial effect on children in terms of their listening skills and improving their confidence.
I will go back to the Deputy's substantive question when he asked about school places and the absence of those in certain pockets around the country.
I did not actually ask that question. It was with regard to Covid-19.
It is actually about the increasing numbers of special needs pupils at primary level as well as about Covid-19. I will mention briefly that, obviously, substantial supports were given regarding Covid-19. With regard to Dublin, the letters of second notice of section 37A under the Education Act 1998 are going out today to 26 different schools to ensure they provide special class places because it is something I want to eradicate completely.
I will come back to the Minister of State's earlier reply when she talked about additional SNA supports. I welcome that additional resources are being put in there. The specific point I will put to the Minister of State is that the SNA exceptional need review took place over the summer. The results of that were available to the Department at the beginning of August. The schools, however, were only informed more than six weeks later in October. They must either go and recruit those SNAs or, if they were unfortunate enough not to succeed, go through the independent appeal process. In practical terms, this means that although the Department decided in early August that schools needed additional SNA support, those SNAs will not be in place until after the Hallowe'en break and until after the longest term in the year. Does the Minister of State believe that is an acceptable situation?
It is important to stress that the allocation of SNAs for this year was frozen. It will remain unchanged until September 2021 and then the front-loading allocation system will kick in. No SNA was taken away from any school. The Deputy is right that there is an exceptional review process. That is available for schools if they need to challenge the fact they need additionality in terms of an SNA. It was very clear, however, and I and the Department worked closely on ensuring no SNA would not be replaced in terms of the school reopening. A significant investment of €14.7 million was put in the school reopening plan for the special education sector to ensure there would be no absences of SNAs, and if there was, that they would be immediately replaced. They have a critical and crucial role in terms of children with special needs being able to interact in a school environment. We now have an unprecedented 18,000 SNAs throughout the country. I will also review the exceptional review process mechanism to ensure it will be streamlined in a more paper-friendly way, as it were, for the schools.
