EDUCATION MINISTER HELEN McEntee has said that it is “her intention” that all children will additional needs will be offered a school place in September, and that all students who were without a place at the start of this school year have since been offered one.

Speaking to reporters today, McEntee and minister of state Michael Moynihan also said their department was working with the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) to move towards a single application system, whereby the parents of children with additional needs would only have to submit one application for a shool, rather than have to apply to multiple schools.

Speaking to the Dáil last July, then-Taoiseach Simon Harris said  he could say “with a degree of confidence” that every child with special educational needs would be offered a school place in September. However, at the beginning of the school year Department of Education figures showed that 126 children were without school places.

Both Minister McEntee and Moynihan said today that all children have since been offered places in the current year.

“It’s been made very clear that all children have been offered places in this school year,” McEntee said.

She said that the focus was now on ensuring all children would be offered places in schools in September 2025.

“It is my intention that every single child will have a place come September, every child needing special education, that they will have a place come September,” McEntee said.

McEntee and Moynihan met with the NCSC yesterday and said they are now working to ensure that “every single child who needs a place will get one”.

The NCSE has previously said that 1,700 special educational classes have been created in the last five years. McEntee said today that an additional 400 classes will be added in the coming school year.

Parents of children with special needs protested last year to highlight the lack of available supports in schools for their children, with those present highlighting how their children were forced to remain in pre-school for years after they were due to advance to primary school.

“It’s really shameful, I’ve been told by the preschool that she is ready for school. She’s been there for three years now and it’s only supposed to be for one year,” one mother, Charlotte Cahill, told TheJournal, speaking about her daughter Charlotte.

Cahill said she had applied to 32 schools last year, but her daughter did not secure a place.

Minister McEntee said today that officials were working to introduce a “single application system” to ensure parents did not have to send multiple applications and receive multiple rejections.

“This is one of the most challenging things for parents to have to apply for, potentially 20 or 30 schools and get in as many rejection letters,” McEntee said.

“It’s stressful. It shouldn’t be happening, and I believe that a common application system could be a game changer for parents.

“But most importantly, it would put the structure in place to ensure that in the same way that every other child knows at the beginning of the year where they’re going to school, that if a child is going to a special school or needing a special class, that they will know at that earliest stage possible.

So we’re working very closely with the NCSE to make sure that that becomes a reality.

With reporting from Jane Matthews