Do not get tetchy, Alan.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I accept fully that the journey of parents of children with special needs is an extremely challenging, difficult and traumatic one. They simply have to fight too hard and too long for access to services and in some cases, though not all, for education and access to school places. It is my objective as Taoiseach to change this story and it is a key priority of mine, along with housing and child poverty. They are the key priorities of my term as Taoiseach and of the wider Go…

There will be a relentless focus on this for the lifetime of this Government.

I will come back on the situation on the CDNTs. That recruitment continues. On education, it should be acknowledged that there has been a huge increase in public expenditure, and rightly so, on special education. It now constitutes 25% of the overall education budget, or about €3 billion now. Money, however, does not mean a whole lot to people if they are waiting for school places. We have some 23,000 special needs assistants now in our schools. We have 20,800 special education teachers. The number of special class…

I will start by acknowledging the work the Deputy did when he was the Minister responsible for this area in the last Government for close to five years. I hope he acknowledges the commitment of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties, with the Green Party, to the issue of childcare during the last Government when it dealt substantially with pay and conditions and money was allocated to successive Ministers for public expenditure in respect of the agreement with the trade unions on pay and conditions. The unions ackno…

The immediate issue is primarily the allocation of resources and also working through what we mean by public health model and how we integrate it with the school-based model for children from the age of four and a half or four years upwards. That is the big question. We then have to ask about the funding implications of that and identify how much would it cost and how we would plan, in terms of the overall allocation of resources, to give effect to it. That is work that can be done. It could usefully be done by an …

I understand what Deputy Doherty is at here. Deputy Michael Lowry is an independent TD. He is not one of ours.

I will say one thing. Sinn Féin needs to reflect. A funeral happened this week. While I have great time for the victims and for wife and those who have lost a loved one, the truth is that Deputy Doherty's party called somebody who murdered five innocent people in a bar and injured 16 more and who was involved in the murder of a trainee garda and a member of the Defence Forces in Derradda Woods a patriot.

What Michael Lowry did-----

-----pales into insignificance in terms of what the members of your movement did. Please-----

I would ask Deputies Doherty and McDonald-----

-----to ask members-----

-----of your movement what they did. Do not be so judgmental. I will not be getting involved in what the Moriarty tribunal.

You have some nerve.

Taoiseach, please.

In terms of recruitment, everyone wants us to get more gardaí as quickly as we possibly can and to get them trained and out on the street in order to increase policing. That is the whole objective of people going into Templemore. On the precise arrangements involved, I will engage with the Minister for Justice and raise with him the issue the Deputy has raised.

I will ask the Minister for Justice to-----

My honest view is that vetting is important but that it is overstated.

What does vetting actually mean?

It is quite limited in what it actually does.