ALL INTERESTED parties are welcome to an open meeting on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties in Malahide, Co Dublin, next month. It is being organised in order to highlight these problems and to offer assistance to groups trying to establish special units within their own schools.

"We want as many parents and teachers to come as possible," says Mary McGrath, chairperson of the Fingal Reading Workshop, which is affiliated to the Association for Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities (ACLD) and which is organising the evening. The workshop provides tuition to children outside school hours.

The Minister for Justice, Nora Owen, will open the event on Friday evening, March 7th, in the Grand Hotel, Malahide. Alan Sayles, an education consultant, vice president of European Dyslexia and chairman of the Whole-of-Ireland Institute of Special Education, will address the meeting. Rita Tracey, the principal speech and language therapist at Lucena Clinic, St John of God's Child and Family Centre in Rathgar, Dublin, will also be speaking.