School Staff
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank the Senator for his question, his commitment to education and the many engagements we have on education and how we can build on the education system we have. In various reports we have seen the success of the Irish education system. On a continuous basis, we meet the challenges and deficits across the system. The Government and our party are working extremely hard on education, and I am fully committed to education, as the Senator will know. I will give him a few statistics on the education system.
The 2026 budget provides for an investment of €13.1 billion in education, up almost 7% on the 2025 financial year. Budget 2026 provided an increase of €845 million in core funding for education and youth on the figure allocated for 2025, while the total investment figure also includes €1.6 billion allocated for 2026 as part of the national development plan, which goes from 2026 to 2030. This funding reflects the Government's continued commitment, under the programme for Government, to ensuring that every child and young person can learn, thrive and reach their full potential. It builds on the progress made in recent years, while recognising that further work is needed to make education more inclusive and equitable for all.
Funding has been provided for 860 special education teachers across special schools and mainstream settings, along with more than 1,700 SNAs, and a €48 million full-year investment across both the DEIS strategy and the DEIS plus scheme.
Approximately 30,000 children and young people attending DEIS plus schools will benefit from these targeted supports.
Schools in the DEIS plus scheme will receive strengthened, research-informed supports across well-being, attendance, engagement, guidance, leadership capacity, community partnerships and access to services, including the introduction of a new positive mental health and well-being initiative to support a whole-school approach to student well-being. In addition, school leadership supports have been increased and will see additional deputy principals in primary and post-primary schools in the 2026-27 school year.
To go back to the point the Senator made, there are huge commitments to education in the programme for Government that we are working every day to ensure we reach in terms of both mainstream and special education. Under my own remit on the special education side, we have sanctioned 560 special classes, which will open in September 2026. We are constantly looking at how we can best equip the education services into the future. It is Important to note that the Government and I, certainly hold very dearly the issues in relation to smaller and rural schools. They are the focus of communities and lead to better outcomes. We have to be very mindful to protect what we have and to invest in the future in terms of commitment. There is no doubt but there will be additional teachers across the education system in 2026-27 but we have to be mindful, as we head into the summer and budget negotiations, of the challenges. The Senator and many of his colleagues met the INTO and I have frequent negotiations with that organisation in relation to its asks for the next school year and the pupil-teacher ratio and all of that. That is a huge part of its asks. For the very determined and hard-working teachers and SNAs who work within the school communities, we must ensure we support them and have all the resources possible to have better outcomes for the child, not just during school time but into their adulthood as well.

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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/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16