Special Educational Needs
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-21
============================================================

Sarah O'Reilly (AON), Agricultural Panel

I, too, welcome our distinguished guests from Cavan, which is a great county.
I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House today. I was concerned last week when I saw the proposed launch of the special inclusive classes. When we get into the detail of what this will entail, it really feels like the Department is trying to give classroom overcrowding a new name. These special inclusion classes will see autism classes double in size. The class will go from having six students to 12, with no increase in staff or classroom allocations. If it is considered best practice to have one teacher and two SNAs per six children, then how is this proposal not simply a failure to meet those standards? The reality is that two SNAs are not enough to deal with six students going between an inclusive class and various mainstream practical classes in schools, especially if autistic students are allowed to choose their subjects in the same way as mainstream students do. Will the Minister of State provide clarity on this? If the Department believes these inclusion classes are the best approach, then why is it not being used in schools across the country as is? My gut, and we should all listen to our guts, tells me that after the recent SNA debacle, the Department is now worried about the staff capacity to open new autism spectrum disorder, ASD, classes and is framing this as an exciting launch instead of acknowledging the reality that it is doubling up classrooms.
Teachers and SNAs are already struggling with burnout and increased workload. They are doing more with less. Is the Department asking them to double classroom sizes? Is that what is happening at the minute? I was surprised that there would be no additional funding for classroom extensions or staff. This is not an existing proposal. It is just the Department window dressing. My office spoke to the principal of St. Aidan's school in Cootehill, County Cavan. The school has been waiting five years for an extension and only got confirmation that the stage 2B report was completed about two months ago. St. Aidan's agreed to adapt one of its mainstream classrooms to create an ASD room. In the process, it lost vital space needed for the mainstream school students. What is more ludicrous is that when the school applied for an additional ASD room, the request was denied, but since then it has been asked by the Department to create a second ASD room. How can the Department explain or justify the rationale for refusing additional accommodation only to turn around and ask schools to magically create another classroom? Instead of progressing extensions and increasing staff allocations, the Department's approach seems to consist of sending letters to schools telling them to make space where there is none.
Teachers and SNAs are finding themselves in impossible situations. These inclusion classes are, in my opinion, nothing more than a clear attempt to sugar-coat increased class sizes. Is it not a major failing that schools and parents feel the Department is totally disconnected from what is going on in schools at the moment?

---

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/seanad/2026-04-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-21