Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19
============================================================

Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

The protest organised by parents for next Wednesday at 5 p.m. outside the Dáil is going ahead because they do not just want a pause; they want the cuts to stop. They want proper support for their kids. The other point I want to make is that this matter is being treated as if the cuts have come out of nowhere. The Government is shocked to hear that all of these SNAs are being cut, but this is the outworking of the policy. Ms Ciara Reilly has written really excellent pieces on her Substack outlining that effectively since 2024 the policy has been to move away from a model where the SNA's job is to facilitate children being included in education towards more of a healthcare assistance model. As a result, entitlement is being based pretty much only on significant primary needs or, basically, medical needs. All of the other stuff, like being unable to cope in a classroom, being autistic or being overwhelmed in a classroom, is not being counted. The fundamental issue here is the policy. The cuts need to be reversed but the policy also needs to be reversed.

---

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/2026-02-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-19