Special Educational Needs
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-06
============================================================

Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

I thank the Senator. The programme for Government committed to an expansion of AIM and to its extension to younger children. The current phase of expansion focuses on the development of a model for children under three years to meet the specific needs of that particular age cohort. It is intended that, over time, all children with additional needs who are registered in early learning and childcare services will have access to support under AIM, with consideration to be given at a later date to extending AIM to school-age children. That would benefit the twins the Senator is working to support. A tailored, evidence based model for this age group would also be required. It is critical that these policy responses are strongly evidence-based and reflective of the needs of the children. That will require the tailoring of AIM and the differentiation of approaches to each of the two separate age cohorts.
An action plan is under way in the Department to address many key improvements. Three notable steps already achieved may be of interest to the Senator. The first is the publication of introductory guidelines for the inclusion of autistic children in early learning, school-age childcare and childminding settings. That is happening in collaboration with AsIAm. The second is the recent launch of the updated leadership for inclusion in the early years, LINC, co-ordinator programme with a focus on the needs of autistic children and the development of supplementary continuous professional development materials. The third is the roll-out of Equal Start, which as I referenced earlier, is a key policy model which focuses on inclusion. Equal Start is a funding model and set of associated universal and targeted measures to support access and meaningful participation, including for school-age childcare, of children and their families who experience disadvantage.

---

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/2026-05-06/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-06