Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

In the few minutes available to me, I will say that I will meet with the Deputies and further engage with the principal as well because we did engage. I will go through that.
The worrying thing is that because there is one student or students within it - we will just say "students" - there is a medical need that is developing within the school and that has become more profound or needy. Is one of the issues that this was not taken into account? I will go back in relation to it.
I know that all the forms, including consent forms, are hard won in special schools because of the complexity of what has to be put on them. Parents have a lot of other challenges in regard to having children with profound needs and trying to meet those. That is something I will certainly look at.
Am I clear in saying that they are looking for a particular type of support within the school? When special schools are looked at, the ratio of staff to pupils is quite high because of the complex needs within the schools. The Deputies will know from working in their communities that some of the special schools are providing very high-end medical care as well within the school communities. It is not fair to say that there are ratios of 2:1. That can vary depending on the needs of the child.
What I will undertake is that I will meet with the Deputies. We could liaise with the principal and the school authorities as well during the meeting to get a sense of it. There is not much point in my standing up here, but we are committed to this and very serious about it. I am desperately serious about trying to do the right thing here and what I will do is undertake to liaise with the Deputies and the school community. I am glad to see they had the bit of investment but we have to continue that investment in the overall sense. To get an understanding of this particular issue, I will engage with the Deputies and we will take it from there.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-24