Budget 2026 provides funding for 3,000 new special educational places within our education system for the 2026-27 school year. As the number of special classes and special schools continues to grow, there is also additional capacity created each year through the natural movement of children from primary to post-primary, leaving post-primary and with vacancies in individual classes.

In order to ensure new special classes can open as quickly as possible, the National Council for Special Education and the Department of education are prioritising working with medium and large primary schools that do not already have a special class and have available accommodation or a building to accommodate a new special class, as well post-primary schools with no special class or just one. This approach maximises the use of existing space that can be established and made to conform quickly and efficiently, while also ensuring new provision continues to be established. It also increases the number of schools with special classes, providing parents with greater choice and reducing the distances some students are travelling to access a special class place.

The Department and the NCSE have also had significant engagement with school patron bodies and school management bodies as part of the forward planning. The NCSE is undertaking analysis of the information provided through the parents notification process, which closed on 1 October, to plot the demand for special class places for 2026-27. The NCSE will also consider vacant places in existing special classes and places that will become available through the regular transition of students through the system. Once this analysis is completed, the NCSE will be equipped to engage with schools to open new special classes in relevant areas.

The NCSE expects to start sanctioning new special classes for the 2026-27 school year this week.

This is four months earlier than last year and will bring clarity to parents and schools as to where classes will be located.

I will come back to some of the other points the Deputy made in my follow-up response.

My concern is that when the portal closed on 1 October, parents were no longer able to apply. Was that a way of saying that, for example, 600 parents applied for their children through the portal and we were able to provide those places? The vacant places that the Minister of State talks about, and I have raised this previously, are phantom places because if there are children at home without an appropriate school place, it does not matter how many vacant places we have. If they are not appropriate, they are a waste of space and a waste for a child.

I am also concerned about the issue of assessment of need. If we are taking away the need for an assessment of need to gain a special educational place but there will be an educational aspect to it, who is going to do that? Are they going to be qualified to do it? If a child rocks up to a school in September, how will the school forward plan for the needs of that child? How do we make sure that the school is the appropriate school for that child? I am really concerned that we have not got a handle on that. We are now entering into a new phase in terms of how we allocate places when we have not managed the phase we are currently in.

We have developed an extremely convoluted system of getting appropriate school places for children. That system was developed over many years and it causes frustration for families, children and school communities.

I will deal with the 1 October deadline first. The deadline was brought back from 1 February to 1 October to get a better handle on the system and to understand the level of need earlier in the school year. We will be sanctioning classes in the next couple of days, which is four months earlier than last year. That will be rolled out over quarter 1 of 2026, which will give greater certainty.

In terms of the assessment of need, it is a key component. We have constantly said that parents do not have to have an assessment of need to access special education but we have to bring clarity to that. Departmental officials and the education partners are meeting today in relation to this and their work will be ongoing because we need to bring absolute clarity as to who is making the decisions. The NCSE will be critically involved in this. We need to clarify who is going to support the school communities because if we do not get this process correct, we will not get the goodwill and buy-in from education partners, which is the crucial piece. We need buy-in from parents, teachers and school communities and, most importantly, good outcomes for the children.

The plan is that the Department will allocate places over the next few days. If it then realises that there is further capacity, is the Department going to reopen the portal so that all of those late applications will be able to be considered as well? We are in one process currently, but an announcement has just been made that will affect the school year after next. It is important not to confuse the two issues because there is huge confusion and fear out there with regard to that. Will the Department be able to open up the portal again so that it can have a true vision of what is actually needed? If an assessment of need is no longer needed, how will schools know what needs a child has?

Families have been contacting the NCSE after 1 October, even though the portal is closed. They have contacted their local SENOs and the NCSE informing them that their children will need specialised places in September 2026, either in a special class in a special school or supported within a mainstream school. We will work with all of those families. We are going to continue to work with them and nobody will be forgotten within the system-----

How?

Since 1 October, quite a number of families have contacted the NCSE-----

They are being turned away. I am sorry to speak over the Minister of State, but they are being turned away.

-----through their SENO or directly. They have made contact through the local SENO, which is hugely important. They have contacted us and we are looking at those figures. We have brought the deadline forward to 1 October this year. We have to have a deadline because if we do not have one into the future, and if we constantly break that deadline, it will not work. We need to be sure of the numbers earlier within the system so that we can properly plan and make decisions and families can know with certainty early in quarter 1 of the year.