Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
============================================================

Paul McAuliffe (FF), Dublin North-West

I thank the Minister of State. We welcomed the sanction of special classes in the Finglas national school. It is an incredibly historic school and one of the original model schools. The difficulty is that, in the meantime, there is a temporary provision in a local community hall where, only on a part-time basis, education is being provided. The difficulty with that is that many parents moved their children from full-time places either in other schools where they were not in an ASD class or from a preschool where there was dedicated special education. They have gone from a situation of being in full-time education to now being in reduced hours because the local community hall is being used for other purposes. I understand that there is a short period in terms of planning, building and so on, but where a child is on reduced hours for six or eight months, the impact, including on the parents, is very significant. I urge the Minister of State to make sure this project is completed as soon as possible.

---

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/dail/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11