Seanad report:Everyone was petrified of the Cathal Ó Searcaigh case, Eoghan Harris (Ind) said. He had been struck by the silence of The Irish Timesover the proposal to remove the poet's work from the Leaving Certificate syllabus. "There is total silence. Not a word of protest from the great liberal organ, The Irish Times."
It was not a good thing to talk about removing books from a syllabus. Mr Harris said he would deplore any abuse by Mr Ó Searcaigh of his position in the Third World, but that had not been proven. He was being tried, hung, drawn and quartered without any proper due process.
Ronan Mullen (Ind) said sometimes there was a judgment call to be made by those who set the syllabus and they might want to "register their disquiet at behaviour". This should not be called censorship per se, because it did not prevent people from having access to books and films. "There is such a thing as setting good example to the rest of society. I think that those who make those decisions should be allowed to act accordingly."
It was unfortunate that the impression was being given that she or her officials were completely against applied behaviour analysis (ABA), Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin said. There was a specific team in the department headed up by a person with a PhD in ABA, training was available for teachers in ABA and there were consultancy grants for schools to provide ABA.
She would love if there was a consensus among the autism community that one method of educating autistic children was superior to all others.