Slowly but surely, the Department of Education and Skills and the National Council for Special Education are retreating from special education in mainstream schools, and they are consistently undermining it by developing wrong models. Special education is under-resourced at the moment and it is not prioritised by the Government. I have met with the parents of children with special needs, with the principals of special schools and with principals of mainstream schools that cater comprehensively in their own ways for children with special needs. The National Educational Psychological Service is grossly under-resourced and needs more psychologists. Every school is limited in the number of psychological assessments it can get per year. For example, a school whose representatives I met yesterday is limited to three assessments a year. It needs 20 on average per year and it is told it can only have three. That is the case across the system. The wait for occupational therapists for children in special education is about two years. For speech and language therapy, it is over a year. There is no ongoing intervention for children on the autistic spectrum in special classes providing for autism in mainstream schools.

The new general allocation model that is being proposed is causing enormous concern to principals and teachers and will shock many parents. Essentially, the whole concept of a resource teacher for children with special needs will disappear. They want a general allocation model now in the interest of administrative simplicity, and that is what will happen. They are saying there will be no more need for professional diagnosis and they think this is a good thing.

A question, please.

At the moment parents are waiting because adequate resources are not being put into the assessment and diagnosis of children with special needs from an early age. The new proposal is for schools to take in the children and avail of a general allocation, whereby they can intervene even without a professional diagnosis. It is also shoving everything back to the parent, because the parent will be able to appeal to the board of management of the school and so on. What research has gone into this? What research underpins this new general allocation model? I ask the Taoiseach to ensure that the Government does not proceed with this model and that it instead starts resourcing the existing system far better than it has. Will he agree to increase the number of psychologists available to the National Educational Psychological Service so that they can get involved much more readily and effectively with schools in assessing children from the get-go?

We are spending €1.4 billion in this area in general. We have more resource teachers and SNAs than ever before. This is a priority for parents and for the Minister for Education and Skills. I do not accept that children should not have access to a professional assessment. Clearly, if there is a problem with a child, it is critical that he or she has access to professional assessment to see what the nature of that challenge might be. Perhaps the general allocation model of which Deputy Martin speaks is an issue that is worthy of a discussion, in so far as the increased availability of professional assessment and increased funding are concerned.

That is another discussion.

I accept that there are delays in respect of speech and language therapy and in psychological assessment, but I would not accept at all any model under which children do not have access to professional assessments. Surely nobody knows a child better than his or her parent, and if there is a difficulty it is very important to determine what that is. There is a €1.4 billion spend, and I would be happy to facilitate a discussion about the general allocation model that Deputy Martin referred to.

I find the Taoiseach's response extraordinary because nobody seems to know what is going on in the Government. The Taoiseach is saying he cannot understand the idea of a child not needing a professional diagnosis.

I do not accept it.

It is what the Minister is proposing. This is the document. There was a meeting of 500 people recently in UCC being briefed by the National Council for Special Education, and it is saying that one of the benefits of the new system is that parents will not have to wait for a professional diagnosis any more. The idea is that there is an educational intervention without any professional diagnosis of the child. That is what the Minister is proposing, and the best the Taoiseach can say is that we will have a discussion.

Read it out until I hear it.

Sorry?

Read it out until I hear it.

Have you not read it yourself?

I will not have time in a minute to read it all out. It is a presentation entitled "Delivery for Students with Special Educational Needs: A Better and More Equitable Way," from the Irish Learning Support Association annual conference.

Read out the section where it says-----

This is the Minister's document. Here it says-----

We cannot have documents being displayed in the Chamber.

"No waiting for diagnosis; No unnecessary labelling".

Deputy Martin knows the rules as well as I do. This is Leaders' Questions. We are over time. Please put the question.

The Taoiseach asked him to read it out.

The Taoiseach asked him to read it out because he does not know his own document.

Go easy, Mattie.

I happen to be in the Chair.

Please put your question.

Will you stay quiet?

If one looks at last year's circular on special needs assistants and at this, one can see a fundamental retreat from special education in mainstream schools. That is what it amounts to. It is talking about standardised tests, social context and the whole idea of a special ring-fenced-----

Will you put your question? We are over time.

-----and child-centred approach to special education is going out the window. The phrase "unnecessary labelling" is insulting to parents. One does actually need a definition-----

Put your question.

-----if one is on the autistic spectrum. That is not an unnecessary label. One does need to know that. A parent needs to know where the child is on a particular spectrum. If one has Down's syndrome, it is not an unnecessary label. It has implications in terms of education requirements and provision. The whole thing is stealthily endeavouring to undermine the edifice that has been built up over the last 15 years and certainly needs ongoing review and change, but not this kind of stuff. That is totally removed from people working at the coalface. There is a lot more I could say about it, but what really frightens me is the Taoiseach's detachment and disconnection-----

This is Question Time.

-----from what his own Government is proposing in relation to these issues. I ask him to change it and to stop it.

Paddy needs to know. The Taoiseach needs to know.

Would Deputy McGrath ever stay quiet and keep his mouth shut?

This is Deputy Martin's usual spiel every week. For the Deputy's information, in case he did not realise it, this Government was the first to appoint a senior Minister for children. This Government was the first to set up a Department of children. This Government was the only Government to hold a referendum of the people giving children their rights as citizens.

The Government's actions jeopardised the outcome. The legislation to give that effect is still going through the Dáil.

This Government has children as a central priority of its focus.

The Taoiseach is misleading the House.

Will the Deputy stay quiet?

I do not accept it, from Deputy Martin or from anybody else. I do not accept it - I do not care what model the Deputy is reading from - that professional assessment of children is not necessary to determine what their particular challenge is.

It is the Government's model.

Will the Deputy stay quite, please?

The focus has to be on meeting the needs of the child.

But this is not doing that. This is going in the opposite direction. It is a general allocation model. The child's needs are becoming irrelevant.

Deputy Martin can twist the words any way he likes. I do not accept Deputy Martin's weekly rant about detachment.

Deputy Martin was there for 15 years and he did nothing only prevent divorce.

I did, actually. I did an awful lot.

This Government made children the focus of political responsibility, with their own Department, their own senior Minister and their own funding, and what is involved here is to determine what are the needs of each individual child.

No, it is the opposite.

I do not accept from Deputy Martin, or from anybody else, that a child who has a problem should not have a professional assessment of what that challenge is.

That is what this document says.

I do not know about the document. I call Deputy Adams.

Neither does the Taoiseach.