Special Educational Needs Dail Éireann — 2026-06-11 ============================================================ Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare The original intention and the continued emphasis of the summer programme is to mitigate the impact of learning loss on those children while schools are closed. An increase in special educational needs prevalence rates, particularly of autism, and the presentation of children with more complex needs has meant that the summer programme is more important than ever. Details of the summer programme were communicated to schools and stakeholders in early May. While it is acknowledged that the details of the programme are typically announced earlier, the Department continually kept in touch with stakeholders querying when the summer programme might be announced to ensure they understood that it would be forthcoming and that schools should start their preparations. As a result, the online application portals for both the school-based and the home-based programmes were opened from 6 May to 15 May. The Minister, Deputy Naughton, and the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, listened to the concerns of schools that wanted to apply after the deadline, and the application portals were reopened from 2 to 5 June. Details on this reopening were communicated to all schools on Thursday, 29 May 2026. The summer programme has been well established for several years, so even though there was a shorter window for applications, schools were prepared in advance. The Department subsequently received more applications for the school-based scheme this year than were run in 2025, with increases across primary, post-primary and special schools. In addition, the number of home-based applications has significantly increased on last year. Officials in the Department have been engaging with schools on an individual basis in relation to the running of their summer programme. Schools have now received their sanction letters with their staffing allocation. This allocation is based on the number of children who are taking part in accordance with the published terms and conditions of the programme. Schools can engage with the Department if they have unique circumstances that require additional resources, and the Department will work with these schools on an individual basis to ensure that they can meet the needs of the children taking part. I believe this is what Deputy O'Reilly is asking, with regard to having a child-centric approach. Equally, it is acknowledged that there are some children with complex special educational needs whose school is not running a school-based programme or a place on the school-based programme is not available. In this instance, these children can avail of the home-based provision which allows for tuition or care support to be provided on a one-to-one basis or in a small group setting. I hope this response outlines the general position to some extent. We will certainly try to ensure the Department comes back to Deputy O'Reilly with greater detail. --- 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/2026-06-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-11