Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-22
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Naoise Ó Cearúil (FF), Kildare North

I thank the Minister of State for his response and, indeed, as I mentioned at the beginning, his hard work in this area. There has been a marked improvement in special education in the country since he took on the role as Minister of State for special education. I commend him on that. I want to thank him as well for his continued engagement because I have been raising issues with him continuously and he has always engaged in an open, fair and constructive way, and I think many people across the House will say the same.
I am not going to go over to previous points but what I would like to do and as I always do on a Topical Issue matter, parliamentary question or oral parliamentary questions, is try to come up with proposed solutions. We can all identify problems, but actually identifying the solutions is the key aspect we should be doing a little bit more of as public representatives.
The first solution I have is automatic certification, that is, introducing a centrally triggered junior certificate profile of achievement process for all junior cycle students, including level 1 and level 2. The second is a clear national certificate to develop a recognisable certificate of junior cycle completion for level 1 and 2 pathways, issued directly by the Department. Finally, we need a review for parity of esteem to examine junior cycle certification arrangements in special schools and address the perceived structural inequality. Those three steps would go a long way to solving this. Maybe it does not seem like a huge issue to a lot of people but for those going through special education, particularly with the increase in special classes in mainstream, it will become more of an issue. It is just about due recognition for hard work and the effort made by the students, their families and the school community.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-22