Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-12
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

On the seriousness with which the NCSE and the Department are taking the numbers, we have worked throughout - right up to almost Christmas, to 23 December - to make sure we had sight of what figures were and how we are going to work on it. At the end of this discussion, there are children and there are families and it is hugely important we give certainty to them.
As the Deputy quite rightly acknowledged, we brought back the date to 1 October. There is huge investment in special education to ensure the needs of children with additional educational needs are being met. We are heading for almost 25,000 SNAs across the system. We are looking at where SNAs are deployed. It is the first time in a long time that we have had a full review because we want to ensure that the need is being met but we have a colossal amount of investment in SNAs. That has increased many times over the past three, four or five years. We understand the challenges that are within the special education system and we are meeting them head on.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-12