Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

The manifestation of that policy is that there were 16,420 SNAs in 2020, 17,921 in 2021, and this went up to 18,831 in 2022, 20,805 in 2023, 22,000 in 2024, 23,870 in 2025, and to over 25,000 in 2026. That is Government policy. That is what I signed off on. That is what all of us in Government signed off on in the Estimate that was agreed.
In addition to that, staffing overall has gone up by about 27%. There are now 22,465 special education teachers in our system. In the past five years, we have provided an extra 16 special schools when there were none for the seven years prior to 2020. The story is one of expansion. The Deputy should at least acknowledge that. That is the point.
Equally, the population identifying with a disability is growing.
We need to expand to deal with the growing need. In the census of 2022, close to 11% - 10.8% - of children in Ireland were reported as having a disability. That compares to 6.4% in 2016. Those are significant factors and we acknowledge those. There is a lot of pressure on the system and we need to expand. When I said we did not sign off on this, no memo came before the Government saying we were going to cut SNAs in individual or specific schools. No memo came to the Government. None. It did not. Those are the facts.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-25