Ceisteanna ó na Comhaltaí Eile - Other Members’ Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-26
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

Something good has to come from this. When you are a parent under pressure worrying if your child is going to get the supports that they need, you do not really care which arm of the State, which office, which Minister or which Department. The buck stops with us, the Government. That is why we needed to stop the review, provide the additional SNAs where that was identified, not have a downward revision in schools but then crucially use this time - that is the really important bit.
I say this in the spirit it is meant. We should engage collaboratively in this House, whether at relevant Oireachtas committees or wherever the appropriate place is, to identify what we want the system to look like into the future. The level of investment now, quite rightly, is very high.
The number of people in the system, quite rightly, is very high. All of us feel that we are getting to a point where it is also going to have to involve a conversation about reform and about what an inclusive model of education looks like. Nobody has a monopoly in terms of the answer on that.
It has been an upsetting week. In politics, when something goes wrong, it is your responsibility to say that, to fix it and to learn from it. That is what we intend to do.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-26