Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know the NCSE met the board of management of one school in County Cork. It has special classes associated with a primary school but it wanted to build a special school on the campus. In my experience and from evidence we are getting, I know there is a chronic shortage with kids from Cork having to go to Limerick, Kerry and Tipperary. Is the NCSE due to make any decisions in the not-too-distant future about the provision of extra special schools? This school was prepared to put the building on the exact same site. It would need to go through the process of planning and all the rest of it. There might be an option to get it up and running with temporary modular units in the short term to alleviate the current crisis. I ask the Minister of State to come back to me on that.

I am glad the Minister of State mentioned the review of the devices. Some of the schools I deal with certainly have difficulties with the devices. I would be very interested in seeing that.

There are special language schools in Killarney and Mallow. Kids in between are travelling up to 45 minutes in both directions. I know that a school recently approached the Department or the NCSE about the possibility of opening language classes within the school. I am not sure who they should have approached directly. I ask the Minister of State to update us on that. I will get her the specifics on that. I do not want to put it on the record because it might not have been discussed with the school community yet. I will get those specifics for the Minister of State.

I am very enthused by the energy the Minister of State has shown this evening regarding her brief, which is very challenging. She has not skirted around anything and she has said it as it is. It is encouraging to see that. There are enormous challenges in trying to accommodate people. The first thing to do is to acknowledge the scale of it and then try to fight for funding. Attitudes seem to have changed certainly at primary school level in recent years, but there is a long way to go. I encourage the Minister of State to keep up the good work and I thank her for appearing before the committee this evening.

I think there are more non-members at this meeting than we have ever seen - I believe five non-members - which shows the interest of public representatives and also the challenges on the ground. Families are at breaking point.

Some families may have been allocated a residential placement because of the specific needs of a child. As they may be moving from outside their own locality, they now have a major challenge in trying to get a place in a special school in September. I thought that if the HSE or the State were providing a residential place, a school place should follow with it. The Minister of State might comment on that.

I call Deputy Ó Murchú before we go back to the Minister of State.