2026-07-01

Last night we had a debate on childcare. During the course of that I made the point that July and August can be stressful times for parents as they try to figure out a patchwork quilt of different types of care as school finishes and there are camps and things like that. The stress of that is multiplied by two, three and ten for parents of children with special educational needs. The Topical Issue I submitted is about the summer provision programme. While the summer provision scheme obviously cannot be precisely the same as school, it is meant to offer a certain amount of continuity for children, staff and families in terms of the support, care and education those children get during the course of the summer. Unfortunately, despite the fact that this is an annual debate, there still seem to be huge anomalies, discrepancies, things that are difficult to understand and shortfalls in time, hours and provision. I was prompted to raise this in the context of an issue in a particular school. I was contacted by a parent and a teacher about a school where two children who had visual impairment were not going to be allowed access the programme because of a lack of SNA support. Trying to get that addressed was something the school had been chasing over the course of two or three weeks, and it received no response from the Department. In the interim, I have learned since submitting this matter that some additional resources have been allocated, but the fundamental point in terms of structure is that this school found it difficult to get answers. Time will tell whether the provision is adequate for those particular children. It still speaks to a fundamental point with regard to the programme as a whole. I will give a number of examples. There seems to be a big issue with special schools in particular. Some parents have told me there was a delayed release of funding, which has led to some schools struggling to ensure staff are provided. There is a particular frustration with the reduced length of the day for special schools for 2026, continuing for the past number of years. The Department's position is that this is from stakeholder feedback. A lot of parents say that this really has not changed since Covid. The kind of feedback that might be talked about could go back that far. There is obviously a discrepancy with the special schools. For them, it is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., whereas mainstream schools with special classes or units attached to schools do full-time hours in many instances. Not every school does, but they are in a position to offer the full four weeks with full hours. The guidance for special schools seems to be that there is no scope for the provision of that. There is also an issue with the window, which was shorter this year than last year - only ten days, when previously it was two weeks. It was opened quite late this year, towards the end of June, whereas last year it was open in May. A lot of parents who are looking to avail of summer provision do not have the opportunity. They are being offered a home-based programme, but that is only for ten hours per week for four weeks compared to either 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the special schools or for the full hours in some of the mainstream schools with special classes attached. There are different anomalies affecting different categories of parents, leading to an awful lot of parents not getting the support they ought to get. It was very late when they found out what would be available.

I thank the Deputy very much for raising the summer programme. I will set out the details of the scheme in the first instance and then I will respond to the specific points raised. The summer programme is hugely valued across the Government and by families and school communities. It is a vital and targeted intervention for the education of children with special educational needs and those affected by educational disadvantage. It is delivered during the summer months to ensure that children with additional needs or who are disadvantaged have continuity. There is an emphasis on different things in each of the schools. Since 2021, the Department of Education and Youth's inspectorate has evaluated the summer programme and the findings consistently highlight the positive impact on many children and young people who have taken part. Parents, staff and children themselves report improvement in confidence, attitude and readiness to return to school in September. The continued emphasis on the summer programme is to mitigate against the impact of learning loss on those children while schools are closed. An increase in the educational needs prevalence rate, particularly in autism, and the presentation of children with more complex needs has meant that the summer programme is now more important than ever. The details of the summer programme were communicated to stakeholders, including the schools, in May of this year. While acknowledging that the details of the programme are technically announced earlier, the Department has continually kept in touch with the educational stakeholders querying when the programme might be announced. This ensured that the schools understood that it would be forthcoming and that they could start their preparation. As a result, and as the Deputy said, the online portal was open for ten days. Following feedback from schools in particular in relation to that, the portal was opened again to allow more schools to apply and get on board with the summer programme. We have more school-based schemes this year than in 2025. That is hugely welcome and means that more primary, post-primary and special schools are engaging in the summer programme. The applications for home-based programmes also significantly increased on last year. A number of schools, including one cited by the Deputy, went back to the Department looking for extra staffing and resources. I understand that a lot of those requests have been met at this stage in terms of giving the resources. In response to the points the Deputy makes, I understand the value of the summer programme. It is a hugely valued piece. It is vital that this valued resource be targeted at children with additional needs and those who are in disadvantage. While we have expanded the numbers quite considerably in recent years, we must ensure that we are targeting those who are most in need. I agree that we need to have the programme opened earlier and for a longer period. We had engagement between the Department and the stakeholders right through the year to say that the programme would be forthcoming but we need to make sure that there is a timeline for the schools because school communities are working extremely hard, in particular when it comes to the year end. Many school communities refer to it as "mad May". I take that point, which was made very clearly. If it is okay with the Deputy, I might come back to a number of the points he raised about special schools and so forth in the closing remarks.

Will the Minister of State take away a couple of points? While the issue I raised was resolved ultimately, that does appear to have been after the last minute, as it was after the provision had already begun on Monday. It was only today that I learned that additional resources were provided yesterday. It should not have come to that. It should not have been the case that two sets of parents were faced with a situation where children with visual impairments were potentially not going to be able to avail of the summer provision because of a lack of SNA supports. Parents of children with special educational needs constantly feel a number of things: first, that they have to fight for absolutely everything; and, second, that there is a constant cycle whereby every spring there is a debate on special classes and every summer there is a debate on summer provision. That is despite the fact that the planning for these should be improving all the time, yet for parents it seems as if the same debate repeats itself and there is not any advance. I want the Minister of State to take away in particular the point about special schools being able to offer full-time hours. Not every special class attached to a mainstream school offers full-time hours but the school has the option. However, it is not part of the guidance available to special schools, which operate between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Those children and their parents need the support the most, as the children struggle the most with the change in the pattern of their day. I want to briefly raise the matter of children with special educational needs. Gaelscoil Uí Riada serves the Bishopstown and Wilton areas in the south-west of Cork city. Its application for two additional classrooms for special classes under the additional school accommodation, ASA, scheme was rejected. Will the Minister of State push for that within the Department? The Department keeps talking about modular units rather than an extension but there is not the space for them. It is a tight, city-based site. It is crucial to ensure that the school can offer additional special education classes.

I will take the points back in relation to the Gaelscoil. Some 1,800 schools and 71,000 children are participating in the scheme this year. Going back five years, there were 545 schools with 23,000 children. We have seen a 210% increase in participation. That gives a sense of the Government's commitment to the scheme. There are issues in regard to the special classes, schools in disadvantaged areas and special schools. The teams that work in special schools are superhuman beings because they work with the most vulnerable children, who sometimes have a very high dependency. They work extremely hard. I have had lengthy engagements with the special school community in recent weeks. We met the principals of all the schools who spoke about the challenges they had within their schools and communities. We will reflect on those points. As well as that, we want to make sure that the summer programme is a hugely important and embedded piece in special education and disadvantaged education now and into the future. We must be open to an evaluation of it and to how we are going to roll it out over the coming years to make sure that we are targeting the resources to the people who need them most. There are a number of points ongoing in that regard. While we engaged with the school communities and the stakeholders on the scheme, which we said would be open – there was no question but that it would be running this year – we need to make sure that we start earlier. Schools and school communities are working extremely hard right up to the year end. We need to reflect very carefully on that. I will give due reflection to the piece about the hours. A number of parents contacted me about that as well.