(Ireland) Huntstown: Mother sues for school place for boy with ASD; "crisis in SPED places in area"
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
“It was a very emotional time, a very stressful time. It was probably one of the worst times of my life.”
Caitríona Rohan was forced to take legal action against the Department of Education in 2024 in order to secure a school place for her son, Rían, who was diagnosed with autism before he started preschool.
Caitríona and her husband Tadhg Rohan live in Huntstown, Dublin 15, with Rían who was born in 2019.
The fast-growing Dublin suburb was the subject of a Government taskforce on special education in the area. Its report was published on Wednesday in response to a significant shortage of special school places there over the last number of years.
Rohan and other parents from the group were part of the taskforce established in 2024, alongside other industry representatives such as school management and principals, officials from the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Department of Education and the Department of Children.
In its report, the taskforce made 21 recommendations and acknowledged significant waiting times for diagnosis, an ‘annual scramble’ to secure special school places for some children, and challenges around planning for future needs.
One of the taskforce’s recommendations is to establish a centralised data system that would enable the NCSE to manage all information on children with special educational needs from early childhood through their progression into primary and on to post-primary education. “This would be a significant key enhancement to current and future planning for special education provision,” the report says.
Another recommendation is the adequate resourcing of Children’s Disability Network Teams (CDNTs) in the area. About 40 per cent of all referrals to CDNTs in Dublin 15 are on waiting lists ranging between four and seven years.]
Children are referred to these CDNTs for diagnoses of additional needs, which are required for special school placements.
The taskforce also recommends significant additional funding for school building and maintenance, as well as therapeutic and behavioural support in school settings.
Emer Currie, a Fine Gael TD for Dublin West, says families in the area “have been through torturous experiences in the past in getting school places”. This report “represents a significant opportunity to change things for the better in the long term”, she says.
“I think this report can make that change happen faster, and can make it be more sustainable and successful, because it’s based on real life experiences from the parents and the schools. It [the report’s recommendations] should be implemented. They should be listened to,” Currie told The Irish Times.
John Walsh, Labour councillor in Dublin West, said the report was a “belated acknowledgment that this crisis is real” and it is “critical the Government now delivers resources to address it”.
Rían is now a senior infant in an autism class in the school he was placed in more than two months into the school term in November 2024. However, Rohan believes the school is not an appropriate setting for him.
While his teachers are “amazing”, it is not his nearest school and it takes him up to an hour to get there on the bus, meaning he does not have an opportunity to socialise with local children.
Neither does he have the same level of support he received at his early intervention preschool, Bye Your Side, in Mulhuddart.
Here Rían had access to speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and behavioural therapy, all of which proved to be a huge turning point in his development.
“Without access to an early intervention preschool, I firmly believe Rían would not be where he is today in terms of communication and his ability to participate in school life,” Rohan says.
She is “not hopeful at all” of being able to secure a more appropriate school place for him, given the crisis in special education places in the area.
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