We face significant challenges throughout the country as regards access to special education. The special education teacher, SET, allocation for schools for 2024-25 needs to be revisited. One school in Swords in my constituency will face a decrease of 12.5 hours, which means it will lose a number of programmes, including one-to-one teaching, it has in place for children with additional needs. We cannot go backwards in this area.

There is a hugely disjointed provision of autistic spectrum units, not only in my constituency but across the country. In Malahide, for example, there are no AS units at primary school level, yet there are two classes at second level. In a town the size of Swords, some schools have four AS units while others have none. This issue is coming up on every single canvass we are on. It is a challenge and crisis that is not getting the attention it deserves. We need a change of approach. What will the Government do in the coming months?

I think the Deputy is talking about the special education teacher model and its organisation. There are about 14,600 special education teachers supporting mainstream classes in the 2024-25 school year. That is an increase of about 1,000 since the end of the 2021 school year. It is the highest number of special education teachers ever in our schools. The model has been in place since 2017. There has been a limited change to the method since then. I have spoken to the Minister on this. The model makes an allocation on the basis of a number of inputs, including enrolment numbers. Children with complex needs are supported in the model by using school-level data from standardised tests in order to reflect relative levels of overall need. There is an appeals mechanism within the new allocation model. Some 67% of schools have either increased allocation or retained their previous allocation. Of the schools whose allocations have been decreased, about 70% have seen hours reduced by five or less.