Special Educational Needs
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-22
============================================================

Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank the Senator, and Mary and her team. It is a great tribute to the Senator's friend as well. I acknowledge that. I also thank the Senator for his kind words on the job at hand.
On the specific school, I confirm that the Department and the NCSE are continuing to liaise with the school authorities on additional classes. We are trying to make sure we have classes within existing structures across education systems. We have many challenges in that regard but the Department and the NCSE will continue to engage to make sure we bring this to fruition.
I thank the Senator for the comments he made. It is also important to acknowledge the great work being done by school authorities across the country which have embraced special education, many in recent years and decades. There are many other school communities that we need to bring into the fold. We need to ensure they open special classes because we need to have special classes in every community, urban and rural, so that people do not have to travel. It is important that we do that.
I compliment the school on what it is doing. I thank the Senator for raising the issues and look forward to working with him. When the conclusions of the NCSE and the Department's consultation with the school authorities are made available to me, I will bring them straight to the Senator's attention.
As always, I look forward to visiting Ennistymon and Clare, as I have done in summer over the years. I have seen at first hand the massive school building. It is across the hill from where we have stayed for the past few years. We look forward to our visit to Clare every year.
I thank the Senator for his comments and his interest in education. When I have further information to hand, I will bring it to his attention.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

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