Debate contribution: Summer Schemes in Special Schools: Cancellation

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 31 March 2026.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

31 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Summer Schemes in Special Schools: Cancellation

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5471328

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have five minutes, I believe. Clearly, we should not be here, not because we are in recess but because we should not have to recall an Assembly to debate something that should have been clarified weeks, if not months, ago and dealt with in private by bureaucrats or Ministers. Having to recall an Assembly to bring special educational needs families, who have better things to be doing, to the Chamber to watch the spectacle that we have seen today is a profound failure of our politics. First, I want to say this to the families who are in the Chamber, to anybody who watches the coverage of this and to all families who deal with additional needs and the complexities and challenges that doing so creates in their lives: I am deeply sorry that you had to endure the utterly unacceptable farce that happened last week. It caused additional stress to you and to the lives of your families, which are so stressful in the first place, and involve, as was said eloquently by Cheryl Brownlee, immense additional stress and burden that those of us who do not have that burden do not really understand, frankly, but it is our job as legislators and public officials to do everything that we can to support you. Clearly, in the past week, the Executive collectively — I will come back to that point — have failed those families. We recognise and welcome the fact that a U-turn has been announced, but we should never have got to that point in the first place, and we should not be here. What is the purpose of the Government? It is, ultimately, for those who are elected to office to work together to serve the public. What we have witnessed today is a spectacle of different political parties, which are supposed to work together for the common good, tearing lumps out of one another. It is shambolic, but it is also shameful, given the state not only of support services for special educational needs families but of our public services more generally and the fact that we have not yet agreed a multi-year Budget. Also, as of midnight tonight, community and voluntary services will lose funding that is critical to their support for communities. Instead, the largest parties that comprise the Executive have come to the Chamber and gleefully torn lumps out of one another. On the specifics of the decision, or lack of decision, and lack of clarity given by the Education Minister and Health Minister, I appreciate the Education Minister's clarifying some points. However, clearly, it was an immense failure by him and his Department and, indeed, the Health Minister to clarify it earlier. In response to an intervention, he confirmed to me that he knew before 26 March. Indeed, he knew weeks before then that the decision was about to be made. Before the EA made the announcement on 26 March that the summer schemes would be discontinued, he knew. I have not heard anybody today explain to me why, at that point, he did not say, "Minister Nesbitt, we are colleagues in the Executive. Can we sort this out so that families are not placed in this position?", or, indeed, why their permanent secretaries or even much more junior officials did not have that conversation weeks, if not months, beforehand. That is a failure of collective Government here. I am afraid that we have seen more of that failure today from parties in the Executive, including Sinn Féin and Alliance — I respect the fact that they are standing up and speaking for special educational needs families — but this is an Executive failure writ large. The public want a Government who deliver for them writ large. They do not simply want point-scoring for its own sake. They want better outcomes for themselves and their families, and this spectacle has been depressing. Our amendment clearly points out that the minutes of the Education Authority meeting on 26 February show that the issue was discussed by the board of the Education Authority. We do not sit on that board. That is not us shirking our responsibility. If we did sit on that board, I would ask our representative why they had not briefed us and pushed us to ask questions about it. However, all the Executive parties are represented on that board, so there is a legitimate question. I think that it was Nuala McAllister who said earlier that nothing will ever improve without accountability. That is our job as the Opposition, and we do it without fear or favour. Why did Sinn Féin, Alliance, the Ulster Unionists and the DUP not clarify —?

I will not. I do not have time, I am afraid. I take interventions all the time, Deirdre. I just do not have time now because I have such limited time to make a winding-up speech.

You raised it, but it was not clarified. Instead, it is much better to come to the Chamber and have the panto villain Paul Givan to shout at. Your two parties are supposed to serve the public here. Certain parties want Paul Givan to be a panto villain. He, at times, is all too willing to play that part. It genuinely fails the public, guys.

We still have a year left. We have to improve public services. We have to finally pass some legislation. We have to prove to the public, including the families who are here today, that this place can deliver something for them. We genuinely cannot go on like this.

936 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:16 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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