Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Last week, the Taoiseach promised a new era for special education and appointed a Minister of State to deliver progress. This week, in Glanmire in Cork city, we see the National Council for Special Education break a promise to give a second special education class to the Brooklodge National School for this September. In Ballincollig, parents are being forced to take children with autism out of their schools and send them by taxi to schools half an hour or more away for lack of special classes in their community. At Scoil Eoin, it is over three years since the NCSE sanctioned three special autism classes but the Minister for Education is refusing to fund the “knock and build” that would best deliver them. Meanwhile, 21 boys with autism have no special class and many of them struggle in large mainstream classes. These are just two of the many examples I could cite from Cork city. The Government promised progress but when are these schools, and society more widely, going to see it?

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