Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-01
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I will take the points back in relation to the Gaelscoil.
Some 1,800 schools and 71,000 children are participating in the scheme this year. Going back five years, there were 545 schools with 23,000 children. We have seen a 210% increase in participation. That gives a sense of the Government's commitment to the scheme. There are issues in regard to the special classes, schools in disadvantaged areas and special schools. The teams that work in special schools are superhuman beings because they work with the most vulnerable children, who sometimes have a very high dependency. They work extremely hard.
I have had lengthy engagements with the special school community in recent weeks. We met the principals of all the schools who spoke about the challenges they had within their schools and communities. We will reflect on those points. As well as that, we want to make sure that the summer programme is a hugely important and embedded piece in special education and disadvantaged education now and into the future. We must be open to an evaluation of it and to how we are going to roll it out over the coming years to make sure that we are targeting the resources to the people who need them most. There are a number of points ongoing in that regard.
While we engaged with the school communities and the stakeholders on the scheme, which we said would be open – there was no question but that it would be running this year – we need to make sure that we start earlier. Schools and school communities are working extremely hard right up to the year end. We need to reflect very carefully on that.
I will give due reflection to the piece about the hours. A number of parents contacted me about that as well.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-01