A charity representing children with intellectual disabilities said parents are reporting a lack of transport as a “major barrier” to attendance at summer educational courses being run to support children with special needs.

A charity representing children with intellectual disabilities said parents are reporting a lack of transport as a “major barrier” to attendance at summer educational courses being run to support children with special needs.
Speaking before the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19, the CEO of Inclusion Ireland said the scheme had been characterised by poor planning, leaving schools and families frustrated and in the dark.
Enda Egan also criticised the exclusion of some children from the programme, which is designed to mitigate the detrimental impact of the lengthy school closures on children with intellectual disabilities and conditions such as autism.
Mr Egan called for the scheme to be opened to all children with intellectual disabilities, including those at second level.
He said a there was a very small group of pupils in the Irish education system who will not be able to attend schools for some time.
He called on the Department of Education to  urgently identify all children who are medically compromised, and put in place supports for them to receive a home tuition package until it is safe for them to return to school. 
Inclusion Ireland also called for the resumption “without delay” of HSE therapies such as speech and language therapy and occupational therapy. It said many of these services could be delivered in a virtual manner. 
Earlier, the charity’s chairperson Lorraine Dempsy said children with special needs and intellectual disability have lost out the most on their educational needs as a results of school closures since March.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Ms Dempsey said that a survey it conducted among 1,000 families shows that over 70% of children were not motivated to learn at home. 
One third of parents were trying to work at home and many were competing for devices or had no access to technology or suitable broadband to allow for online learning.
A proportion of children with diverse needs need one-to-one teaching and assistance that could not be managed in a home environment.
Ms Dempsey said that there were financial pressures on parents to prepare resources such as printing materials to help with learning.
She said there was very little support provided to families with children with intellectual disabilities in the early weeks of the pandemic.
Despite the fact a summer programme was launched claiming to doubled space for 20,000 children this year, Ms Dempsey said “the reality is that very few school have opted in” to provide the schools-based programme and none of them are providing transport.
This made it untenable for many to access programmes and home-based help with SNA’s is very difficult to source.
The committee will be presented with the results of the survey carried out by Inclusion Ireland.