Special Educational Needs Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East I thank the Deputy for making this important case. The Government is committed to the provision of additional special school places for children with special educational needs. Budget 2026 secured funding for 3,000 new specialist places and the NCSE is currently looking at where these places should be best located for the school year 2026-2027. There is a lot of work going on at the moment in that regard. Over 2,700 new places were provided in 2025-2026, meaning there are now 3,741 special classes nationwide. That means there will be 300 more additional places. There will be 3,000 new specialist places next September. There were 2,700 new special places in this school year, so we are building on work we are doing. We need to build on it and put provision in the types of locations the Deputy is talking about, where it is best placed to meet existing and future demand. In County Kildare, there are 148 special classes in operation providing capacity for 888 kids. This includes 17 new special classes in this school year, 2025-2026. In addition, 16 new special schools have been established in recent years. Six of these special schools are in County Kildare educating approximately 359 students with the most complex needs. These are supported by the Department and the National Council for Special Education. The NCSE will have a clear picture of local demand for special class places for the school year starting September after it reviews and assesses all the information it has got through the parents’ notification process, which closed last October. As the Deputy is aware, an earlier deadline was introduced this year to support forward planning and to better equip the NCSE with local information as to what students would be leaving school, transitioning to post-primary, or who is seeking specialist placement and maybe entering the education system for the first time. The information is critical to decide where to put provision. The Department and the NCSE continue to work closely with school patron bodies, management bodies and schools to confirm these new special classes for next September. We have begun sanctioning new special classes this month. Some 236 have been sanctioned to date and many more will be confirmed in the coming weeks. Of these, 11 are in County Kildare. The earlier sanctioning of new classes happening this year provides clarity for parents and allows schools more time for the planning and establishment of new special classes. The vast majority of new special classes being announced are being provided in available school accommodation which is being reconfigured as a special class. Each special class is allocated one teacher and two SNAs, and at post-primary level schools should receive 1.5 teachers posts and two SNAs. Details of those special classes are on the NCSE website. Once special classes are sanctioned by the NCSE, it is envisaged that schools will open admission for them. The NCSE will continue to support all children made known to them after the dates but obviously it works better if the information can be provided. There is still a huge amount of work ongoing and that is just the way it is. It is still earlier than it has been before. --- 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/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-29