Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Darren O'Rourke (SF), Meath East

There are a couple of things there. We do not have the figure for the number of children who do not have an offer. We do not have the figure for the number of children who were notified to the NCSE after 1 October. I presume the Minister of State does have those figures but is not making them publicly available. That raises very significant concerns. Based on my estimation, we are talking about hundreds of children without an offer and thousands of children in inappropriate school placements - nearly 4,000 based on the applications prior to 1 October.
It is the Minister of State's formula of words that he "encourages" schools to go now and begin their admissions policy. Is he tracking that at all? Of the 546 classes that have been sanctioned, how many have their admissions completed or ongoing? Does the Minister of State know?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28