Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I too acknowledge and recognise our entire teaching profession, our teachers, our special education teachers, our SNAs and the entire school staff who support children every day and those who support children with special educational needs. It is for the reasons outlined by the Deputy that I wrote to the Teaching Council recently to ensure we put a process in place so any person coming through their teacher training would have a specific focus and an emphasis placed on a mandatory element on special education teaching and that they would have mandatory placements in special education classrooms and rooms so every teacher has the ability to support every young person no matter what their needs are. We have a separate body of work being done looking at our teacher workforce, including how we support teachers, how we encourage more into the profession, how we keep those who are there and how we encourage those abroad to come home. We need to look at all options and ways in which we can support those teachers, not just those who are teaching children with special or additional educational needs. We need to acknowledge the work they do and support them in every way possible.

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