Next week marks 18 years since Mary McAleese, in her first term in office as President, signed the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, EPSEN, into law in this country. That was on 19 July 2004. It was brought into law because the Government at the time acknowledged the failings in supporting our most vulnerable children. Successive Governments have failed to commence the Act fully, meaning a failure of support for our children. This year is no different as we see continued failure in appropriate planning and placement. It is remarkable to have 18 years of failure. We are now at a stage of organising a review of EPSEN. Is there any point at which the Government will issue an apology for this 18 years of failure?

To be fair, on any balanced, objective assessment there has been very substantial investment in special needs education in this country over the past 20 years. In particular mainstreaming special needs education started in the late 1990s through the provision of a pupil-teacher ratio for children with autism. That started in 1998. SNA provision was implemented and now has many thousands of workers. This year there was an increase of 10% over last year. The legislative template as enshrined in the EPSEN Act was not fully commenced over the years by different Governments. I have views on that myself. While that did not happen on the legislative front, it is not fair to say that in the educational world substantial progress was not made; there was. There needs to be more and the Government is taking steps with further legislation, for example, on school admissions and so on.