Special Educational Needs Dail Éireann — 2026-02-12 ============================================================ Paul Lawless (AON), Mayo Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit. It is fundamental that families have certainty today. They need to know. We talk about forward planning and so on but in Mayo letters are coming from the Department and the NCSE and basically promising children a place in a special education school. Then the family goes to the school and is told it is oversubscribed. That is the type of planning I am talking about. The system is so disconnected. How do we have a scenario where the NCSE is delivering letters promising a special education place when there is no such place in Mayo for the child? That is the point I want to get across to the Minister of State. I must acknowledge the 2,500 teachers promised in the budget is very ambitious but I am asking the Minister of State for certainty and timelines for SNAs and special education teachers for St. Anthony's School and for many other schools across Mayo. --- 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/2026-02-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-12