In recent weeks a school in west Cork has told its early intervention classes to close. After a local campaign this decision was rightly reversed, which is welcome news. However, it is still of huge concern that the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, plans to phase out early intervention classes nationwide in favour of the access and inclusion model. Needless to say, that would be a disaster. Since then I have been doing my best to try to get answers. At a committee meeting last week the NCSE had a worrying and evasive response. Where we would expect it to say that is absolutely not the case, it said it is waiting on the findings of an access and inclusion model, AIM, report and did not want to comment. Since then it and the Department have just ignored my questions so today thanks to the Ceann Comhairle I raised it with the Minister for Education at the Topical Issue debate and she also did not answer the question. I do not expect him to know the answer in this exact moment but I have tried every other avenue to try to get an answer to this question, so will the Taoiseach please look into it?

In my days as Minister for Education, I was responsible for bringing in early intervention classes, especially language classes, in national schools, which proved to be highly effective in terms of outcomes for children with language difficulties, in particular, or other difficulties. I am a passionate believer in early intervention. I will discuss this with the Minister for Education. The National Council for Special Education has statutory remit and freedom to commission reviews and to put forward policies. We have to acknowledge that. Of course, that does not take away our right to interrogate that policy. I believe in early intervention on the ground. We should not take away resources that are there already.