The Irish Government has utterly and abjectly failed to support disabled people and people with special educational needs.
On Thursday, September 19th, People Before Profit will bring a special motion to the Dáil demanding concrete emergency action from the Government. Read the full text below:
THAT DÁIL ÉIREANN:
notes that:
— over 10,000 children are waiting for an Assessment of Need (AON) and 110,000 are awaiting essential therapies;
— over 120 children were without a school place at the beginning of September this year, while many more are forced to do a third year in the Early Childhood Care and Education Programme or are in Autism Spectrum Disorder preschools;
— only 1,028 out of 3,300 primary schools have autism classes, and only 410 out of 710 post primary schools have autism classes;
— all children deserve an appropriate education in their own community and no child should be left behind;
— the Health Service Executive (HSE) are not providing AONs in the legally mandated time frame as set out in the Disability Act 2005, with the result that 25 families a month on average are compelled to go to court to force the State to provide an AON;
— the National Council for Special Education and the Department of Education are also not providing all children with an education as provided for in the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004;
— a third of all primary schools were allocated less Special Education Teacher (SET) and Special Needs Assistant (SNA) resources this year than last year, and SNA allocations in mainstream education have been frozen for the last number of years;
— over 1,000 children with disabilities were without transport at the beginning of September this year, and €78.9 million was spent in 2023 bussing almost 20,000 pupils with disabilities out of their locality to special classes/schools;
— thousands of children are left without the summer programme every year as many schools do not offer this service, 45 per cent of special schools did not run the programme this year;
— Children’s Disability Network Teams have an average vacancy rate for therapists of over 30 per cent nationally, this rises to around 40 per cent for occupational therapists, 70 per cent for dietitians, 70 per cent for play therapists, and Chamber House in Dublin 24 has a 50 per cent vacancy rate and St Columba’s in Crumlin has a 60 per cent vacancy rate;
— while the 83 proposed actions of the Government’s newly published Autism Innovation Strategy are an acknowledgment of the challenges facing autistic people, the strategy fails to address the immediate and urgent needs of families and children with special educational needs;
— despite the strategy’s focus on creating an “autism-affirming society” and improving access to public services, parents remain concerned about the lack of appropriate school placements for this academic year;
— parents and campaign groups also question the timing of the strategy’s release, which they see as a cynical attempt by the Government to deflect from the growing anger among parents as the new school year begins; and while the Government promises future improvements, many families are currently in crisis, struggling to secure basic educational rights for their children; and
— parents and campaigners have indicated that they will continue to escalate their recent protest actions until they are heard and meaningful solutions are offered; and
calls on the Government to:
— establish a centralised database from the moment a child is diagnosed to provide better data tracking and forward planning for a child’s needs;
— implement a comprehensive plan for staff retention across the relevant services addressing, in particular, pay and conditions;
— introduce emergency measures to ensure full staffing of Children’s Disability Network Teams and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, including speeding up the recruitment and recognition of the qualifications of international candidates for therapists;
— double the number of places available in universities for therapeutic courses;
— ensure that AONs are carried out and recommended supports and therapies given within the legal timeframe; according to the HSE at least an additional 375 clinicians are needed just to clear AON waiting lists for children with autism and ensure that the timelines for AONs outlined in the Disability Act 2005 are met;
— ensure delivery of adequate training and support for teachers, SETs and SNAs;
— implement a comprehensive plan to rapidly reduce and clear waiting lists for services;
— implement emergency action to provide appropriate school places for all those who need them now;
— provide the necessary supports in schools for children who are currently unsupported by getting rid of the SET allocation model and trust schools and parents to know the supports needed by their children, and allocate SETs and SNAs according to this principle; begin by increasing the number of SNAs by 2,000 and the number of SET posts by 1,000;
— invest in education to ensure that every school in the State has an autism class and every school offers a summer programme;
— remove all barriers to further education for those in allied health and education professions;
— immediately ratify the Optional Protocol of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
— supply non-means tested universal payments that cover the real costs of having a disability and provide income security to disabled people;
— introduce a guaranteed living wage for carers that is not means tested, and protect these supports with a new constitutional amendment to assert equality for disabled people;
— guarantee and safeguard these supports with a constitutional amendment to guarantee all necessary supports needed to fully engage in society as a basic democratic right;
— implement the Therapies in Schools plan as per the fully staffed pilot scheme and recruit dedicated trained staff accordingly; and
— invest an additional €2.5 billion/massively expand funding for disability payments and services in 2025; this should be the first year of a transformational multi-year programme to end exclusion and poverty for disabled people and ensure no one is left behind.