Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 13 January 2026
1244. Deputy Ivana Bacik asked the Minister for Education and Youth the amount of the special education budget used for reading recovery, expressed as a value and as a proportion of the special education budget, in each of the past five years, in tabular form. [1877/26]
View answerThis government is fully committed to supporting students with special educational needs to fulfil their full potential and the Programme for Government makes a number of commitments to deliver on this objective.
Reading Recovery™ is a short-term intervention for children who have the lowest achievement in literacy learning in their first years at school. Children are taught individually, by a specially trained teacher for 30 minutes each day for between 12-20 weeks of instruction. The goal is for children to develop effective reading and writing strategies in order to work within an average range of classroom performance. Reading Recovery is an early intervention. Once children begin to fail, opportunities for them to regain normal progress among their peers become more difficult and more costly to achieve. Also, there is strong evidence that school failure leads to lack of self-esteem, diminished confidence, school dropout, and other negative outcomes.
The estimated annual cost of Reading Recovery is approx. €1.75m. However this expenditure does not fall under the special education budgetary allocation.
My department and the NCSE are committed to delivering an education system that is of the highest quality and where every child and young person feels valued and is actively supported and nurtured to reach their full potential.
