Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe has said he will keep the issue of funding for a school for children with autism on the Armagh-Monaghan border “under review” after he was accused by his Northern Ireland counterpart of unilaterally pulling funding for the project.
The North's education minister Caitriona Ruane said today Mr O'Keeffe had decided to pause funding for the jointly agreed project at Middletown school. She said it was “unacceptable” that he had decided to do so and she hoped to meet him tomorrow to discuss the matter.
In a statement, the Department of Education here said the Government had put about £3.5 million into the Middletown Centre. This included £1.5 million for the Department's share of the property purchase cost and “all revenue and capital costs to date”.
It said much had been achieved in collaboration with the Northern Ireland department of education and that the centre was now delivering programmes and commissioning research.
But it said the current economic climate “has meant that we’ve had to thoroughly review all educational projects and programmes”.
“Given the competing demands in the education sector and the overall demands on Government finances, it has not been possible to provide extra funding to fully develop all projects now under way. In the current circumstances, we cannot do all we would wish to in terms of enhanced services and the decision to pause the expansion of Middletown Centre as planned this year.”
Mr O’Keeffe’s department said the decision did not mean funding was being “withdrawn” from Middletown and that it would “continue to be targeted at providing services and, indeed, to develop some extra services”.
“The Department of Education and Science is anxious to ensure the continuation of ongoing training and research programmes. The Department will, of course, keep the expansion of the Middletown Centre under review in the context of improved economic circumstances.”
The statement said the Government had had to “prioritise certain areas of expenditure - in particular services to children with special educational needs”.
“We’re very conscious of the demands placed on parents of children with autism and we remain fully committed to ensuring that services are in place to meet the needs of parents and their children with autism and indeed all children and young people with special educational needs.
“We’ve continued to prioritise educational and health services for children with special needs.”
It said this commitment was reflected in the allocation of extra funding to expand the National Educational Psychological Service to cover “all our schools” and that it continued to allocate extra teachers and special needs assistants “where required”.
Funding for the 2009/10 financial year had yet to be finalised by both Departments, it added.
Ms Ruane said the Minister was present at two meetings where the funding for the Middletown centre were agreed.
“I will be asking him to review the decision that he took. Because together both governments took a decision that we would support this, yet one government took a unilateral decision that they weren’t going to support it. So this isn’t acceptable.”
“During difficult economic times – and we all understand that – I have difficult times here in the north of Ireland as well….it’s more important that we put money into our children with special needs.”
She said the centre had already trained about 700 education and health professionals who had gone out into schools and the community. The next stage was renovation of the premises to make it safe for children, who would then come to be taught there.
“It has been doing very good training work and very good research work and now we are moving into the stage of the project that both governments have agreed.
“We agreed it at the last meeting of the North-South ministerial sectoral meeting in Dublin. We agreed it at a previous meeting in Downpatrick. I just find it unacceptable that one of the ministers is saying at this stage that they are going to withdraw money. That is totally unfair.”