A protest will take place today over the closure of special pre-school facilities for nine children suffering from autism at St Catherine's School, Barnacoyle, Co Wicklow.
The school has been funding the children, aged three and four, at the ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) section out of its own resources as the Department of Education has not sanctioned finance for the children.
However, the school has been forced to issue notice to the parents informing them that without funding, the ABA school for the nine pupils will be closed on March 31st.
Today, the protest organised by the parents will take place outside Leinster House at noon.
Harry Cullen, head of the school, said they had had no communication from the department or the National Council for Special Education.
"It is absolutely critical that these children have special early intervention at as early an opportunity as possible. A delay of a year is absolutely disastrous," he said.
The nine students were awaiting sanction for their placement. Most had been there since last September and the school had been funding them itself and through voluntary contributions, he said.
The school had submitted papers to the department but had heard nothing.
"We've had to tell the department and parents that in the absence of sanction for these students coming to us we'll have to discontinue. In addition there are five more students on the waiting list who should be attending," Mr Cullen said. There were 65 other older children in St Catherine's, so the school itself was not closing, he added.
One parent whose child is one of the nine affected said it was very distressing. "We'll have nine children with nowhere to go and they'll have to stay at home receiving no education. Parents are distraught. They don't know what they're going to do. The children are the proof of the system's effectiveness and we don't want them to regress," she said.
Other children who had taken the ABA had gone on to mainstream school, she added. Yesterday, a Department of Education spokeswoman said the National Council for Special Education had been keeping the matter under consideration and review.
Irish Autism Action said in a statement that ABA was the only scientifically proven effective intervention for children with autism and was recognised as such worldwide.
There were 12 such schools currently funded by the department, it said.
It was estimated that the money saved when one child progressed to a mainstream setting from one of these schools saved the State in lifetime care costs, the equivalent of the money to run an ABA school for 30 children for three years, the statement said.
The department was yet again spending millions in taxpayers' money in a High Court case in which it was defending its decision not to fund an ABA education for one of the St Catherine's children, it added.