Special Educational Needs
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

We will endeavour to have that circular in operation for September 2026. It is important as we face the school year. I think a lot of students are looking forward to the holidays. We should not be talking about September. Certainly, when I was going to school, I thought September was sometime off in the Middle Ages. Families are looking at what is the best earlier in the year. They know the limitations and the challenges their children have in school, they are looking at how best they can support their children and they are reaching out to the school authorities. We, as the Department, and all of us as partners in education, have to make sure we have as streamlined a process as possible. We did an extensive review of it to make sure that we were covering all bases in it.
As regards the issue the Senator raised, she mentioned she had an appeal in. If we can take it offline and see whether there is anything, we will do that. Overall, we are committed to ensuring that every child reaches their full potential within the education system. We have a huge amount of work done and a lot of work we need to do to make sure that we are taking the anomalies and challenges out of the system, whereby someone is just marginally at one side or the other of the line for the accommodation of that. I will commit to making sure that the new circular which governs this will be done as speedily as possible. Also, if there is any assistance we can give in relation to the existing one, we would be more than willing to help.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27