Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

I raise the matter of a group of children who are being left behind by this Government. Those are children with mild or moderate learning disabilities and complex needs. Mothers of children with Down's syndrome have written to me to express how abandoned they feel. They say that the Government is intentionally misleading people by talking about special classes when 89% of those classes are designed for children with autism. It is welcome that we are getting autism classes but the Government should be honest about that. When the Government announced in March that it was sanctioning 387 new special classes, only one was a general learning disability class. Of course, it is welcome to have some recognition by the Government of the needs of autistic children and their right to education but children with Down's syndrome have an equal right to education appropriate to their needs. An hour a day of special education support in mainstream does not provide that. Will the Taoiseach raise this? Will the Government commit to opening more general learning disability classes?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-09