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

Therein lies the point. We are continuing to invest hugely, but we have to ensure that we get the outcomes of that investment for children and young people in primary and post-primary schools. There are a lot of teachers and SNAs across the education system. They are working extremely hard, and they are desperately committed to what they are doing. They are constantly looking at new initiatives and trying to find the best way of doing this. We are bringing in teacher training for special education to make sure that it is part of this.
There is a constant discussion in relation to the reading schools. We know of the children and other individuals who have gone to the reading schools, and after a number of years, they are able to come back into mainstream school. We can see how that has benefited them. There is a huge volume. There are 15,000 extra special education teachers in the education system. We want to make sure that we can mainstream as much as possible. I take the Deputy’s point on ensuring that we have those available in every school across the country. All of the assistive technology is being rolled out, which is important.
For students who have a particular challenge with dyslexia or other reading or literacy issues, it will affect them into later life. Like the Deputy, we all meet people in adulthood, and we would be filling out a form for them, or whatever, and we can see that it has impeded their lives. We understand that. The most important piece is that there is constant investment in all aspects of specialised education. The NCSE and the Department are continuing to monitor this. We will never arrive at a position in the education system where we say that everything is perfect now, because it is constantly evolving, and new information and research are constantly coming through. We are working on it. We will endeavour to make sure we are doing the right thing.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27