STEPHEN KEALY,
Sir, - Mr Woods's Education for Persons with Disabilities Bill 2002, recently circulated, debated and amended in the Senate, has the capacity to excite and energise special education. However, the method by which it has come before the Oireachtas beggars belief given the breathtaking absence of any degree of wide consultation, particularly the exclusion of parents as the main stakeholders in the process.
The Bill, which has all the potential to transform education for people with special needs does not deal adequately with supports throughout education from pre-school to tertiary level.
Why, in the present climate in the State, are such fundamental proposals for change, the primary target of which is to confer rights, introduced by stealth and speed? The resonances of this Bill will reverberate in the Courts long after this Minister has gone.
This Bill should not be enacted before the dissolution of the Dáil, but rather redrafted to meaningfully address the serious life needs of education for people with disabilities and special needs. - Yours, etc.,
STEPHEN KEALY,
Director of Psychology,
Sisters of Charity Services,
Dublin 6.