Today, parents of children with special needs from across the country will again begin an overnight sleep-out at the gates of Leinster House. These parents cannot find suitable school places for their children. It is a deep and long-standing crisis. Notwithstanding the Taoiseach's answer to Members earlier, the fact is that hundreds of children are locked out of the education to which they are entitled. When I raised this crisis with him in February, he said he would do everything to ensure that every child waiting for a school place got one in September.

However, the parents are now beside themselves with worry because, following a meeting with the Minister for Education, no such guarantee was made or given. These children and parents deserve that guarantee. They should not be forced to protest again outside the Dáil. Will the Taoiseach now again give a clear-cut commitment that every child will have access to a suitable school place come September?

As I said earlier to Deputy Bacik, who raised this on Leaders' Questions - I have just responded to Deputy Nolan, who has also raised this issue - the Government's obligation is to vindicate the right of every child to education and to a school place. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, are working flat out with the National Council for Special Education and the Department of Education to make sure there will be a sufficiency of places for the school year beginning next September and throughout. That means additional special schools. Three hundred and seventy-two extra classes have already been sanctioned and there is engagement now with other schools with a view to those schools taking on additional needs children and providing additional places.

As the Taoiseach knows, today is World Autism Awareness Day. I ask about the supports and therapies that are available for children with additional needs in my constituency of Dublin South-West. As the Taoiseach knows, we are all being contacted constantly by parents at their wits' end who are seeking crucial and urgent interventions for their children, be it speech and language therapy, occupational therapy or psychology. Waiting lists for assessments of need are in their thousands and even waiting for a follow-up services statement and getting access to the therapies can take years.

In the Ballyboden primary care centre in my constituency, we have gone from five speech and language therapists in 2022 to one part-timer. Our local CDNT is struggling to get staff. It is competing with the HSE for staff because it is a section 39 agency. We have schools that are opening additional special classes, which is fantastic, but with the number of students with additional needs increasing, the wraparound supports for those special classes and the therapies the students need have to increase as well.

I am not disagreeing with anything the Deputy is saying. The issue is solutions and we have got to work on it. My own view is that the progressing disability programme, which was developed back in about 2013, has not worked, or the particular models. I want to pay tribute to people working in CDNTs because they have had huge burdens and workloads but the problem is, prior to 2013, special schools had therapists. They were taken out of the special schools and spread more widely. In my view, those with severe and profound needs lost out.

There is no easy solution to it but we need to provide a therapy service in education, and we need to do that in the first instance with special schools. This is something I have been focused on for quite a long time. I acknowledge the frustration. In the last term of the previous Government, we were not in a position to get it over the line but we have made it clear we want to do it this time. That is not the full answer but it at least allows for and would create a multidisciplinary within the special schools that we could then evaluate and expand to the broader school system.

Today marks World Autism Awareness Day. Aligning themselves with the occasion, there will be up to 200 parents and guardians who will sleep on the pavement outside Dáil Éireann today. It will be the second time they have done so in a number of weeks. They are doing so for a plethora of different reasons related to assessments, diagnoses, therapies, school places and access to SNA provision. However, there is a common thread that aligns with all of those parents and guardians, that is, paying for what their children are being asked to go without.

Acting upon that pain, those parents became legal experts. They have had to take on therapeutic practices themselves just to provide the service to their children that the State is failing to give. We have talked about it in a number of different ways. I understand what the Taoiseach will say to us regarding what his intention is. I hope he might, or somebody from his Department or members of his Government will-----

I thank the Deputy.

What would the Taoiseach say to those 200 parents outside on the pavement today if he were to talk to them?

The Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, have met the parents. We are saying we are doing everything we can to provide places. We have already provided 372 school classes. We are making very significant progress this year. Delivery is more important than making promises. Next September, we want every child to have a school place that is appropriate for the child. That is what is being worked on right now.

The Minister and Minister of State are saying - the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, spoke to me this morning - that for next year, they want the applications brought forward to November of this year for the following school year, and that the NCSE and the Department would have in place by 2026 - that is the aim - a common application system where people would apply in November and where there would be a liaison with parents and schools to make sure that children would get places early, taking the anxiety out of it.