Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
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Joanna Byrne (SF), Louth

I note that the Minister of State spoke about giving people the best possible care and services they require. I hope it is not lost on the Minister of State that WALK peer has dramatically changed the lives of young people with special educational needs in my constituency and other counties. Countless young people have availed of the programme. In most cases, it has literally been a lifeline for young persons and their families. The recent PASTEL report from DCU undertaken by Dr. Scanlon provides compelling evidence that the WALK peer supported transition model is a high-impact, cost-efficient and policy-aligned model for improving outcomes for young people with disabilities. Maybe if the Department of education had attended the launch in DCU last November to which it was invited, it might know that itself and it might not have made the decision to cut this funding. If the Government is serious about developing its national transition policy in the context of the national human rights strategy for disabled people, then it has to get more serious about engaging with WALK and about integrating or complementing the WALK peer model into this planning.
As a TD who meets families of young people with disabilities and additional needs on a regular basis, I can tell the Minister of State that many of these families are oblivious and frankly are not remotely interested in lofty policy documents or interagency reports. What they know is that they have had to battle to access services for their children from a young age. That battle is constant. From assessment of need to special school places and SNA provision, the list goes on. This Government decision is another slap in the face to these families and an absolute insult to young people with disabilities or additional needs who rely on the WALK peer programme. This decision can and must be scrapped. I again ask the Minister of State to take it back to his colleagues.
I have three main asks of him tonight, namely, to commit to interim funding beyond December to ensure that the programme runs for the entire academic year that they are currently availing of the supports at the moment, scrap the winding-up of the programme and provide funding to continue the project as set out in the WALK submission to the Government and urgently meet with WALK to meaningfully discuss the future of the programme with a particular focus on the post-school needs of young people currently in the programme. For an Aire, I have pages and pages of other testimonies from parents who are suffering the same worry at this time.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-16