TUI:Minister for Education Mary Hanafin has shown "excessive patience" in dealing with the exclusionary policy of some schools towards special needs students, it was claimed yesterday.
Speaking in response to Ms Hanafin's address to the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) congress, TUI president Tim O'Meara told delegates that her failure to take on "vested interests" smacked of "cowardice".
Speaking after the congress, Ms Hanafin accepted it was a serious issue, but stopped short of saying that schools that did not take on their share of special needs students and those with behavioural difficulties should be sanctioned.
"I think it would be very difficult to withdraw funding from non-fee paying schools who are offering an education in schools throughout the country, who are ensuring that the local people are being accommodated and they're offering the curriculum," she said.
Ms Hanafin said her department was halfway through an audit of the enrolment policies and statistics in relation to the inclusion of children with special needs, Travellers and non-Irish nationals.
"Certainly in the first instance I think a moral responsibility should be placed on all schools to be inclusive," she said.
Ms Hanafin was earlier given a respectful but lukewarm welcome by delegates as she made her address to congress, in which she said over €820 million was being provided for special education in 2007.
Some 15,000 adults were working solely with children with special needs in Irish schools and a further 35 psychologists would be recruited to bring the total to 209 in two years, she said.
She gave a commitment to remove the current limit of two extra language teachers per school and also confirmed that fees would be abolished for certain back to education initiative participants.
She said she had addressed TUI concerns over discipline by introducing behavioural support services and through changes to the Education Bill.
"The one thing that you had highlighted was the fact . . . that the balance was wrong, that the balance was in favour of the disruptive student and that it ignored the rights of the other students to learn and of the teacher to teach. That balance has now been restored in that legislation."
She praised work in the post-Leaving sector and said funds had been secured to make "meaningful and realistic reform" this year.
In his address, Mr O'Meara called for €2 billion to be invested in education to bring investment levels into line with other European countries.
"Investment in education is an investment in the future," Mr O'Meara said.
"Many of your recent initiatives, while welcome, often smack of tokenism, like a sound byte rather than a serious attempt to address the problem. They are either underfunded or the qualifying criteria are too narrow."
Mr O'Meara also criticised the lack of psychologists currently available.
"Minister, does it embarrass you that in a cash-rich country like Ireland, that we still have the St Vincent de Paul spending over €3 million each year on education?" the TUI president asked.
"To add insult to injury we now have principals looking to the St Vincent de Paul to fund psychological assessments for children whose parents cannot afford to pay for them privately."
In response, Ms Hanafin said there was a substantial privately funded psychological assessment scheme in place, which schools could access.