Special Educational Needs
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-22
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank the Senator for raising this issue. We all have connections to school communities, be they within our own communities or, indeed, across the country. It is hugely important that political representation continues to engage with school communities because they are the bedrock of the future of our society.
The Senator is right to say that special education is very important to me. Since I took up this role, I have worked with the then Minister, Deputy McEntee, over the last number of months and now with the new Minister, Deputy Naughton. We look forward to advancing all education, in particular special education.
As the Senator may be aware, an additional 168 classes have been sanctioned across 159 schools over the last couple of weeks. That is the first tranche of the amount of schools that we will sanction over the next number of months. We hope to be in a position to sanction other schools in the not-too-distant future. All Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas will be made aware of them, they will be on the NCSE's website and the school authorities will be notified about them.
In terms of Stapolin and the school mentioned, I know about the great work that is being done there. The school already has three special classes, with two dedicated to children with autism and one for students with developmental language disorder or speech and sound disorder. That school community does exemplary work. They really are at the cutting edge in terms of what they provide to students right across mainstream but particularly for special classes. I compliment the school leadership, the teachers and the SNAs for the work that they do within the school every day.
It is always great to see it when schools that already have special classes look forward to having more because they see the benefit and get a huge sense of reward from working with children with additional needs. I saw that quite clearly from the work being done by many of the schools that we visited across the country over the last number of months.
The NCSE has engaged extremely closely with school authorities in terms of what is needed into the future. The next tranche of announcements will occur within the next week or so. The NCSE and the Department are working very closely with this school's authorities to ensure we understand what they want to enlarge the cohort of special education requirements within the school. There is huge demand right across the country, but particularly in Dublin, of which we are acutely aware. We understand all that.
I take the points that the Senator made about the buildings. What we are trying to do across the country is look at what can be done within existing school buildings. In every school in which we will open special classes, we would have to go in with new build or modular build but those decisions are being made at the moment. My Department and the NCSE have weekly meetings to monitor them. Over the next number of weeks as the position becomes clearer, I propose that I come back to the Senator with an update rather than giving carte blanche information here this morning that we might not be able to stand over. I propose to take back the issue raised by the Senator and then report directly to him when we have an update from both the Department and the NCSE.

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