Under-resourced Special Education Schools
I recently watched a Prime Time report on the lack of supports in special schools.. It highlighted a serious problem: schools do not always have enough of the specialist staff and services needed to provide the kind of environment in which their students can properly grow and learn.
Michael Moynihan, Minister of State with special responsibility for Special Education, said something which really struck me.
“I believe that every euro that is spent on specialised education will have a huge benefit, not alone for the children who are going through the schools, but for society in the long-term. ”
Michael Moynihan
What he said sounds positive, like we’re definitely setting things up the way they need to be. But it’s actually indicative of a major issue in this country. Every euro being spent is not what counts if the services children need are still not being provided. We need to spend the amount necessary to do the thing right, not a cent less, not a cent more.
We overpay for bike sheds and underpay for education for our most vulnerable students.
I’m not really blaming the Minister for this - it’s such a chronic and pervasive problem with government expenditure in Ireland. It feels like there is very little focus on what needs to be delivered and what actually is being delivered.
It is so difficult for parents whose children have special needs to find the right supports for their child. I can only imagine how hard they all have fought to get their child a place in a special school, certain that it would provide security, understanding, specialist education and the opportunity for their child to develop to their full potential.
Parents said they felt abandoned when the specialist staffing, therapeutic services and resources their children needed were not available. For children with autism, intellectual disabilities and complex needs, inadequate support can have very real consequences.
These children can have complex needs. They may require a great degree of consistency, routine and carefully tailored support - without which they may experience distress, become more withdrawn or display challenging behaviour. Parents of children attending the under-resourced schools described in some cases regression, distress, challenging behaviour and incidents where children were injured.
At Belmayne Community Special School in Dublin, a mother described how few hours of education her daughter initially received. The school opened without enough staff to provide the level of education and support that its pupils needed. As if educating its pupils was a secondary concern. And there also wasn’t enough staff to properly supervise all the students, so her daughter was physically hurt by another student.
That’s not the fault of that student - who has special needs and may require a high level of supervision and attention. Nor is it the fault of the staff - who are doing their best in an understaffed and under-resourced school.
In Carrigaline Community Special School in Cork, a mother described her upset at watching her son regress while attending the school. There wasn’t enough speech and language therapy and occupational therapy being provided when the school opened.
If these schools are not sufficiently resourced to provide the specialist therapy and education their pupils need, how can we say they are providing the special education those children were promised? How are they even proper schools?
A child may have a place, a classroom and dedicated teachers, but still be unable to access the education they need if there are insufficient SNAs, therapists, specialist staff or appropriate behavioural supports.
It is also important to recognise the position of school staff. The families featured in the report were clear that they valued and respected the teachers and SNAs working with their children. The problem is not a lack of commitment and good work from staff. It’s that the staff are working within a system where all the necessary resources and all the specialist expertise needed are not always present.
Good intentions and strongly worded commitments are not enough if the resources needed to follow through on them are not provided.
The Department of Education says significant progress is being made in expanding specialist education. They are delivering more special classes in standard schools and more special-school places. It has also begun developing a new Education Therapy Service, with speech and language therapy being introduced to more special schools.
More staff and more education hours have been provided since the schools first opened. Which is a welcome development. But the question remains - are we measuring success by the number of places created, or by whether children actually receive the education and support those places are supposed to provide?
In the Prime Time report, the Minister mentioned that from September 2025 to September 2026, 9 new special schools have been set up and almost 1000 special classes across the country are now being provided. Expanding capacity is essential. But expansion without the right staffing, therapeutic services and specialist supports risks creating places that exist on paper without delivering what children and families were promised.
Every child deserves access to an education suited to their needs. Parents should not have to repeatedly fight, complain or campaign before the appropriate supports are put in place.
And that brings us back to the Minister’s words: investment in specialised education can be a “huge benefit” not only to the children going through those schools, but to society in the long term. But to achieve that benefit, the investment has to be enough to provide the education and supports those children actually need.
If you haven’t seen it already, do watch the Prime Time report.
