IRELAND WAS RECENTLY reported to be facing a shortage of appropriate school places for disabled children.

I have always found the language around this deeply strange, even before I had autistic children of my own. Education seems to be one of the few areas where deciding which environment is ‘appropriate’ and which is not is treated as acceptable. Shouldn’t all schools be appropriate for all children?

The persistence of this language reveals something fundamental about how inclusion is understood in education. Not as an obligation owed to every child, but as something optional. Through a series of decisions and circumstances, anywhere can remain an ‘inappropriate setting’.

This is how exclusion can emerge. Not through explicit rejection, but through conditions that make belonging impossible. Through the quiet normalisation of the idea that some children must leave in order for systems to remain unchanged.

The constant campaigning

The experience for some families campaigning for autism, ‘special’ or what are termed ‘appropriate settings’ reveals an uncomfortable truth: this has never simply been a crisis of capacity. It is a crisis of belief.

For some families, campaigning begins with being told there is no demand. Parents gather and present evidence, believing that once the need is clear, the system will respond. But even if they achieve an autism class in principle, that belief can begin to erode when delay is presented as progress.

Some are told the class will come after other priorities are met. In the meantime, they observe rooms repurposed as offices, or prefabs appearing to accommodate growing mainstream enrolment. In some cases, years pass while the needs of autistic children exist entirely in the present.

Meanwhile, conversations can shift, and parents may find themselves in meetings where the possibility of moving their child to a ‘more appropriate setting’ is raised.

Gradually, a difficult realisation takes hold: the barriers are not physical. They are systemic. You come to understand that you were never simply fighting for an autism class. You were fighting for your child to belong.

When it works, and doesn’t

My two autistic children now attend a Gaelscoil that sees them, listens to them, values them and assumes their belonging. This is an example of a school which fought to open an autism class. But that, in itself, reveals the most important thing about the school. It isn’t the autism class that defines it. It is how the school responds to children.

It is its willingness to listen and to adapt so children don’t have to. It is the way the school has convinced my daughter that she is safe, because she is embraced exactly as she is. The way it has ensured that every pupil is part of a shared journey to understand and communicate with my non-speaking son. It is the belief that our children are not problems to be managed but members of the school community.

Schools like this exist across Ireland. But a consequence of our current system is that it places enormous pressure on those who choose to include. When schools make the effort to value disabled children, word spreads quickly among parents. Those schools become oversubscribed, and this creates a dangerous distortion.

Headlines say there are not enough school places. But what they often reflect is a system in which inclusion is optional. That kind of autonomy, exercised without accountability to inclusion, creates inequity not just for individual children, but across the entire education system.

It’s troubling to imagine an autism class which sits within a culture that doesn’t truly believe disabled children belong. The ‘special’ door becomes a side door – and everyone knows it. If the corridors, classrooms, yard, assemblies, curriculum delivery, behaviour policies, homework expectations and communication systems remain unchanged, then it’s all still inaccessible – just with a designated room where some children can be placed.

That is not equality. It is containment.

If we are serious about equal educational rights, we must think much bigger. We need reform that treats disabled and neurodivergent children as co-designers of the system, not as exceptions to be accommodated.

Inclusion should not depend on finding the right school. It should be the defining characteristic of every school. This requires leadership – not just in policy, but in language, expectations and accountability.

For too long, the system has leaned on the language of ‘appropriate settings’, as though inclusion were a place a child must qualify for, rather than a responsibility the entire system must uphold. That language matters. It places the burden on children to find somewhere else to belong, rather than on the system to create environments where they already are.

We must move away from a placement-first approach, toward a support-first approach. The question should not be “Where should this child go?” but “What does this child need, and how do we provide it here?”

What schools need

Schools should be supported with expertise, training and resources to respond to children in their own communities, rather than relying on relocation as the default solution. Principals and boards of management should receive mandatory training in inclusive education, disability rights and universal design. When leaders understand that inclusion is fundamental, the system begins to change.

Finally, where barriers arise that prevent disabled children from being included, the Department must intervene. Families should not be left to negotiate inclusion alone. The State has the responsibility to ensure every child can access education in their community.

Last week’s headlines spoke of shortages. But the real shortage is the collective belief that disabled children belong in every school. When that belief takes hold, inclusion stops being scarce. It becomes the norm.

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This is not just an aspiration. It is already the stated position of Irish education policy. The National Council for Special Education has made clear that disabled children should be supported to attend their local schools.

Ireland has also ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which affirms that disabled children are not excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability.

The principle is not unclear. What remains unclear is why it is still not consistently being delivered.

Because what inclusion cannot mean is placing the burden on children to leave their community to find acceptance elsewhere.

What it cannot mean is forcing families into a lottery system, hoping for a place in a limited number of designated classrooms.

That is not inclusion. That is segregation by another name.

Ireland has approximately 4,000 schools. If our mission, as a country, is truly to create an inclusive education system, then those 4,000 schools must be inclusive, accessible and appropriate. Every single one of them.

Inclusion is not a place. It is a promise. And it is time the system kept it.

Lucinda Murrihy is Head of Strategy at Inclusion Ireland and is the proud Mum of two autistic children.