The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, has announced the creation of 350 new teaching posts to help schools cater for children with special needs.
The announcement follows a call by the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) for the Minister to recruit 400 new teachers to "help resolve the special needs crisis in education".
Addressing the INTO conference in Tralee, Co Kerry, this morning Mr Dempsey confirmed the new appointments and said they would start to come on stream immediately. Schools with special needs pupils will be allocated additional new teachers based on the numbers of children with special needs studying at the school.
Mr Dempsey said the process of allocating new teachers was already under way as the Department has already received applications for extra resources from schools with pupils with special needs.
"We will be recruiting teachers who are qualified to teach special needs children. At the moment we have unqualified teachers dealing with special needs," said Mr Dempsey.
The president of the INTO, Mr Sean Rowley welcomed the announcement by the Minister.
"We welcome the allocation of 350 new teachers, but, reduction of class sizes is also as important," said Mr Rowley.
The INTO demands in the area of special education include:
- An allocation of resource teachers to every school based on numbers of pupils on the basis that every school will have some children with special needs;
- A method of accessing additional resources for children with more acute needs;
- Increased stability and manageability of special needs in schools;
- Proper guidelines for schools on the allocation of resources to children with special education needs;
- A rights-based - not resource-based - approach to resource allocation.