Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-17
============================================================

Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

There has been an increase in the number of schools. More applications were received for school-based programmes this year than in 2025, with an increase across the primary, post-primary and special schools. In addition, there has been an increase in home-based applications, which significantly increased last year. We are working across the system to ensure we are delivering decisions and appeals. Further information has been sent in by school authorities to the Department in recent days, and that is being worked on in a timely manner. Certainty is being issued to schools, and we understand the need for that.
There has been an increase. This shows the value that the families and school communities put on the summer programme. I am pleased to see that more primary, post-primary and special schools are engaging in the programme. That is what we want. We want to make sure the programme is open to all. In the past few years, there has been an increase of 210% in child participation. That is welcome. It is what it is all about. It is to ensure that children who require further education, those with additional educational needs and children from disadvantaged backgrounds have the opportunity of the summer programme.
This programme was devised many years ago and it has been successful and has been running across the schools. We understand the value of it. The engagement between the Department and the school authorities is ongoing. A lot of documentation was issued over the last day or so in terms of staffing and that will continue. On the home-based tuition, or the home-based programme, we are working to bring clarity to families because I know families need certainty at this point in the year.

---

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/2026-06-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:09+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-17