Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-22
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Jennifer Whitmore (SD), Wicklow

I thank the Minister of State. It is not often that I, or any Opposition TD, comes in here and gets the answer they want from a Minister of State. I welcome the fact he has confirmed there will be additional special education classes for Wicklow and that they will be announced shortly.
In relation to letters of eligibility, I understand the Department is working hard on this issue but what can I tell parents? As I said, one child has a place and the school is happy to take the child but the family does not have the letter of eligibility. The SENO has actually said they will not issue one because the deadline has been missed. Does the Minister of State have a message I could give to those parents who do not have a letter of eligibility? What are they meant to do? Do they talk to the SENOs? How do they apply for a letter of eligibility in the absence for the portal being opened? Ideally, it would be brilliant if the Minister of State opened the portal because that would be the simplest way to deal with this. Otherwise, people are relying on individuals within the system. I ask the Minister of State to open the portal, even if only for a few weeks, to allow the backlog to go through. What do I tell parents in this instance?
I will raise another issue with the Minister of State that came back very strongly when I spoke to parents. While it is brilliant that there are special education classes and places for children on the autism spectrum, there is a huge deficit in places for children with mild learning difficulties. That is a very big problem as well. I ask the Minister of State to take that into consideration. I know the NCSE will sanction places based on what the demand is but that issue is coming to me very strongly. At one stage, the special schools were told they would not be able to take in children with a mild learning difficulty diagnosis and they would have to go mainstream but mainstream schools do not have the capacity. Some of those children will get lost in some of the very big schools. I ask the Minister of State to take that into consideration when developing policy in this regard.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-22