Quinn spins into a U-turn he knew of a month ago

A look behind the shroud and spin in Ruairi Quinn’s statements, those of the NCSE, and of Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore’s pontificating in the Dáil last week on the special needs education cuts casts some light on what happens inside the Department of Education.

It was the 12% surge in applications that Quinn on Tuesday said had prompted the fast-tracking of a review into resource teaching allocations — a review already announced would happen and recommended to him over a month ago — which he used to front his U-turn. He had just got Cabinet approval to reverse the planned cut in weekly resource teaching hours for 4,000 additional children with disabilities — the cut that he and Gilmore assured us not a week earlier was merely an adjustment.

The numbers now qualifying for resource teaching have reached 42,500 in mainstream primary and second-level schools. This rise, combined with the ongoing cap of 5,265 resource teachers the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) can assign to schools, prompted last week’s bad news to schools and children.