As Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to this important issue and address concerns which have arisen in recent days.
My sole focus and that of my Department officials is to ensure equitable and appropriate access to educational provision. The Minister for Education and Youth, Deputy Naughton, and I have secured a record budget of …
TDs / Michael Moynihan
Michael Moynihan
Minister of State at the Department of Education and Youth
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
5
questions asked
Oral and written, to government departments
133,123
words spoken in the chamber
133,123 as a minister, 0 as a TD
426
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
4
topics asked about
Across 3 departments
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
What they ask about
The subject headings the Oireachtas filed their questions under.
Who they ask
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Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Questions asked 5 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Contributions to debates 382 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Questions | Contributions |
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| December 2024 | 0 | 0 |
| January 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| February 2025 | 0 | 27 |
| March 2025 | 0 | 3 |
| April 2025 | 1 | 25 |
| May 2025 | 1 | 5 |
| June 2025 | 0 | 15 |
| July 2025 | 0 | 19 |
| August 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 2 | 4 |
| October 2025 | 0 | 18 |
| November 2025 | 0 | 10 |
| December 2025 | 0 | 42 |
| January 2026 | 1 | 12 |
| February 2026 | 0 | 34 |
| March 2026 | 0 | 8 |
| April 2026 | 0 | 26 |
| May 2026 | 0 | 23 |
| June 2026 | 0 | 30 |
| July 2026 | 0 | 18 |
| August 2026 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 0 | 6 |
| October 2026 | 0 | 57 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 349 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Asked about similar topics
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Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Cork North-West 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fianna Fáil 29 November 2024 to now
- office Minister of State at the Department of Education 29 January 2025 to 1 May 2025
- office Minister of State at the Department of Education and Youth 2 May 2025 to now
It is crucial in our commentary to note that special education is important to all of us, including the Minister, Deputy Naughton, and me. We are at a desperately early stage of negotiation. It is vital that any movement on special education brings in all the education partners. We have no intention of going backwards in terms of providing for specialised education across the system. We have invested significantly. W…
As I said in my reply, the work referred to by the Deputy is "at an early stage of development". I cannot be clearer on that. It is vitally important. He talked about resources. We are talking about €3.8 billion in the special education budget this year. That is up from €3 billion. We are investing. We understand the need right across the Department to provide specialised education. We have had huge engagement and in…
I thank the Deputy. Does the education committee clash sometimes with the oral questions?
That was one of the practices when I chaired the education committee 20 years ago. Apologies.
I recognise the important role that mild general learning disability special schools have played in supporting children over many decades. I have visited a number of those schools and met the principals. These schools are long established, well respected and acknowledged for the work they do in supporting their cohort of st…
The work on the removal of the diagnosis, which was the subject of the first question I answered this morning, is at a very early stage. There is huge engagement right across the education sector on that. With any fundamental changes that are made on special education, we have to bring all the education partners – the school leaders, the schools and of course the families and children - on board because we have to li…
First, the engagement on the assessment of need is at a very early stage. This is a fundamental piece that we are looking at. It cannot be changed unless we have the entirety of the education partners on board and they are satisfied that what we are doing is robust and is not putting pressure on any single aspect. I am acutely aware of that but I want to assure the Deputy that we are working very closely and are list…
An estimated 25% of the total student population, or 240,000 children and young people, have specialised educational needs. The majority of these children continue to access mainstream classes with their peers and are supported by their class teachers, special education teachers and special needs assistants as necessary.
The NCSE's "parents notify" process provides a mechanism for parents to indicate a potential req…
I thank the Deputy for his comments. We continue to expand special education. We are working with a very small cohort of students and young people who do not have a school place and we are putting a huge effort into engaging with their families and school communities to find a resolution. The Deputy mentioned a case to me. I do not want to put specifics on the record, but I assure the Deputy that the NCSE and the Dep…
Whatever about guaranteeing things as a Minister of State, what I can say is that the NCSE and the Department are working with the families and relevant schools to continue to support them until we have found a place. We will continue to do that. We are aware of the small cohort of students who are without a school place. We are doing everything we can at the weekly update meeting and right through the week. The NCSE…
I thank the Deputy for raising the matter. I acknowledge that his question relates specifically to County Clare, but I will also touch on the national perspective.
The mainstream class teacher is the person who leads on the teaching and learning for all children in a primary classroom, including those with literacy difficulties. We currently have the lowest ever pupil-teacher ratio at primary level. In addition, the…
One of the issues in special education I have met in the past year or so is dyslexia and reading and writing skills. In a lot of school communities we have visited, it has consistently been one of the issues raised. We have also met many families and communities who have grouped together to look for better resources and skills in this area. On the pilot programme we put in the budget, we wanted to get a better unders…
The Deputy is quite right. First, we have to understand the scale of the challenges being faced. Over the last year and a half or so, many of the communities I have met raised these issues with us. We are rolling out this pilot to get an understanding of what is needed across the country and how we can best equip our education system to meet that need. Education is the great ladder for life and it is hugely important…
There are currently 242 educational psychologists employed in NEPS, who work across 4,000 schools. The scheme for the commissioning of psychological assessments, SCPA, supplements the capacity of NEPS to provide a casework service for children with the highest level of support needs. The scheme provides children and young people with access to a private educational psychologist on the SCPA panel for individual casewo…
This year, Dublin City University commenced enrolment for the first time. There are now two programmes, at Maynooth and Dublin City University. This work was done to ensure that we have enough educational psychologists across the system. We recognise that we need more educational psychologists across the education system. Private assessment is used when we cannot meet that need within the system, but our predominant …
In each of the schemes being expanded across the education system, one of the first issues is whether we can meet that need with professional support for school communities. As the Deputy knows, school leadership and school communities across the country are working extremely hard. They are very conscientious in terms of how they meet the needs of their pupils. In expanding any of the schemes, we always have to deter…
I thank the Deputy. I can assure him that both the Minister, Deputy Naughton and I are conscious of both the opportunities and the challenges presented by artificial intelligence within the education system. The Minister was in Estonia recently looking at their approach to developing AI literacy and the early implementation of its national AI Leap programme. The visit reinforced the importance of ensuring that pedago…
The Deputy's points are well made. This is crucially important. Like many technological developments over the decades, AI is presenting challenges. Within the Department and in society in general, we have to ensure, regarding the developments that are happening, that in parallel the Department is equipping its educators and those within education with the tools to ensure we are meeting them. Last October, we publishe…
The Deputy's point is well made. Just over a decade ago, the research was being done with hard copies of books. Students or anybody doing research would have had to do that. Now, you can put that information together within seconds. That is leaving aside the ability of students or the young person to engage meaningfully with it, equipping them for life. Education at all levels is about equipping people for life. We h…
I thank the Deputy. School attendance is a key priority for the Minister for Education and Youth and me, and across government. Regular attendance is fundamental to educational achievement, well-being and personal development. It provides children and young people with the opportunity to learn, build friendships, develop confidence, and achieve and feel a sense of belonging within their school community. Too many chi…
I assure the Deputy that the Government, the Minister and I are acutely aware of the challenges in terms of school absenteeism. The report that was recently launched is hugely important because while the various metrics used by the Department of education on the level of education being provided in this country are very positive, we must also make sure that we are reaching everybody. Having students and children in s…
A huge amount of work is being done by school leaders to understand the challenge and how best they can meet it daily. The school leadership is looking at it. They know their students and the ones who have been absent for several days and the issues they have. I have heard from school community leaders about the level to which they go to ensure that people are coming to school and what issues are causing school avoid…
I thank Deputy O'Reilly very much for the question. We discussed this across the Chamber a number of weeks ago as well. The Government is investing a record amount of money in education through budget 2027. This record level of investment includes funding of €646 million to place education and youth services on a more sustainable footing. The Department's staffing schedule is a long-standing feature of the primary sc…
I will come back to the other point in my follow-up reply.
As is the case for all schools approved under the projected enrolment process, the additional post is allocated on a provisional temporary basis pending confirmation that the required enrolment threshold has been met. In the 2025-26 school year, the enrolment decreased from 281 pupils to 249, a reduction of 32. The school has returned an enrolment of 267 pupils. I think the Topical Issue regarding this was on 28 or 2…