Special Educational Needs
Seanad Éireann — 2025-05-28
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Hildegarde Naughton (FG), Galway West

I thank the Senator. To be quite frank, my door is open to all suggestions. When I was in education, many of the problems around the summer programme within the schools related to teacher burnout or people needing a break. We were looking at therapists or student teachers, for example, coming into the school setting and being able to provide the service if the school staff are not available. If the Senator has any suggestions, I ask her to please relay them. The big elephant in the room is the shortage of supply of staff. We need to be innovative in how we do that and make sure the safeguards are there and the expertise is there. That is at the heart of what we want to provide. We are increasing the funding. We have bursaries and we have incentives for people to work within the disability service. There is outreach to secondary schools for raising awareness about the importance and value of working within the disability sector and incentivising people to work and to retain staff within our CDNTs. Any suggestions are welcome.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-05-28