NEWS

The Minister states: The DEIS programme is a key policy of Government to tackle concentrated educational disadvantage at school level. It provides a targeted range of supports and is additional to the universal supports provided to all schools, such free hot school meals at primary schools and free schoolbooks. Schools also have access other universal supports such as wellbeing supports for students through the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), additional tea

The Minister states: Budget 2026 provides funding for 3,000 new special educational places within our education system for the 2026/27 school year. As the number of special classes and special schools continue to grow, there is also additional capacity created each year through the natural movement of children from primary to post primary, leaving post primary and with vacancies in individual classes. In order to ensure new special classes can open as quickly as possible the

The Minister states: In line with the programme for government commitment, the Education Therapy Service (ETS) has been established as a critical and important support for children and young people in their school environment. The ETS is an additional support for children with additional needs. It is to supplement and not replace existing children's health and disability services. It is intended to commence initially in specials schools and rollout over time to special classe

The Minister states: The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) is the statutory agency with responsibility for the provision of special education places. The NCSE has sanctioned 407 new special classes for the coming school year of which 398 are autism special classes while 3 are autism early intervention classes. This brings to 3,742 the number of special classes in our schools. The NCSE has advised my department that an updated list of these classes is available on

The Minister States: It is my department's policy, in accordance with the principles of inclusiveeducation, that students with additional learning needs to the greatest extent possible, attend mainstream classes along with their siblings, neighbours and peers, with additional supports provided as necessary. My department provides over 15,000 special education teachers to support schools to achieve this objective. This means schools get a substantial additional teaching alloc

The Minister states: The Department of Children, Disability and Equality has policy responsibility for improving access to high quality and affordable Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare. DCDE has recently established a Supply Management Unit, and a key part of that Unit's remit is to develop a planning function, for monitoring, analysing and forecasting of the supply and demand for early learning and childcare in a nuanced and specific way at local area level. M

The Minister states: I have established the accelerating infrastructure task force to support the immediate work programme of the new infrastructure division in my Department, which is to identify and propose measures to address barriers to the delivery of strategic infrastructure across Ireland.  This issue is key priority for me and the Government.  The work programme for the task force and the new division will focus on many critical infrastructure areas in terms of the el