Official Report: Tuesday 31 March 2026

Mrs Dodds: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Following the appalling attack in Lurgan last night, where a delivery driver was forced to deliver a suspicious object to outside Lurgan police station, may I place on record the Assembly's condemnation of that act of violence and our support for all those who were affected, including the families who had to be moved and the police officers who had to deal with the aftermath? May I make it clear, Mr Speaker, that the Assembly should speak with one voice in condemning that violence?

Some Members: Hear, hear.

Mr Speaker: Technically, that is not a point of order, but the Member has made her point on the issue.

Mr Speaker: Before I go through the motions of commencing the debate, I would just like to say that today's issue is a serious one and that Members should reflect on that. It is not an opportunity to kick lumps out of each other. I hope that the debate will be better than that and that we will adhere to better standards than that. I will leave it in your hands to do that, Members, but I put that to you at the start of the debate.

Having been given notice by not fewer than 30 Members, I have summoned the Assembly to meet today for the purpose of debating a motion on the cancellation of summer schemes in special schools.

Mr Tennyson: I beg to move

Mr Speaker: The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to two hours for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes in which to propose and 10 minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. Three amendments have been selected and are published on the Marshalled List. The Business Committee has agreed therefore that 45 minutes will be added to the total time for the debate. Please open the debate.

Mr Tennyson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Over the past week, families of children with special educational needs have been put through a disgraceful and entirely avoidable ordeal. The decision to cancel summer schemes at special schools, only for it to be reversed fewer than 24 hours later, has caused widespread distress, anger and confusion, and rightly so. Those schemes are not optional extras; they are a lifeline for families, providing structure, routine, support and social interaction for children with additional needs and disabilities and offering much-needed respite for their parents during the nine-week summer break.

To pull the rug from under those schemes at the last minute, without warning, consultation or a contingency plan, was an appalling dereliction of duty by the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education. It left families abandoned, scrambling for alternatives that simply do not exist, and school leaders were left in the dark. To make matters worse, the announcement slipped out just as the Assembly entered recess: a clear attempt to avoid scrutiny or accountability in the Chamber, knowing full well the chaos that would ensue for families. What happened next was that Ministers hid behind officialdom, passing the buck and pointing the finger at one another whilst parents cried out for real leadership and action.

It is, of course, a relief that common sense has since prevailed, but it should never have taken the backlash from concerned parents or a recall petition from Alliance to drag Ministers back around the table. The fact that it did and that a resolution was then magically found within 24 hours exposed just how shambolic and blasé the approach to those vital schemes has been.

The issue of nursing provision in special schools is not new. The concerns about the delegated scheme are well known. It is also not simply the preserve of summer schemes. The Departments, by the Minister's own admission, had been engaging on those issues for months. Officials, schools and families have all been raising concerns repeatedly for years. Met with a brick wall, my colleague Nick Mathison, as Chair of the Education Committee, stepped in to facilitate a meeting between principals and the health trusts back in 2024. He facilitated a further meeting with the two Ministers later that year. Lofty promises and commitments were made about reviews and action, but, clearly, nothing has changed.

Parents of children with special educational needs are at breaking point. They are forced to fight every day for every scrap of support that they need throughout their child's life, from diagnosis to securing school places, accessing respite and planning a post-19 future for their child. Every delay, barrier and blockage places more strain on families who are already stretched beyond their elastic limit. The latest debacle is not merely an administrative failure or an operational decision, as the Minister claimed. It is yet another blow to families who are exhausted from battling the system at every turn and whose children always seem to be the first to lose support and the last to find out. The issue is a microcosm of a system that is failing children with special educational needs and their families in our society.

Yes, the U-turn is welcome, and, yes, families are relieved that the schemes will now go ahead, but that relief does not erase the harm. It does not ease the anxiety or replenish the confidence that has been so heavily diminished. It also does not answer the fundamental questions. Who made the decision? Why was cancellation of those vital schemes on the table in the first place? When were the Ministers aware? Why did they sit on their hands? Why did they not intervene earlier? Why were the Education Committee and the Assembly not notified? Why, on Thursday, was it not possible for schemes to proceed safely but, suddenly, on Friday, it was entirely possible to make them safe? What will the provision look like this year for those families? Will the nursing cover be sufficient? Will the Ministers ensure that there will be no repeat of this saga in future years? What steps will now be taken to address the issues in nursing provision that have been occurring for years, and how can the confidence of parents in Ministers' ability to deliver wider reform to the SEN system be rebuilt, given the shambolic way in which this situation has been handled?

Parents deserve answers to those questions. They deserve accountability and a fulsome apology in the Assembly today from both Ministers. Anything less, including resorting to the usual bluster, deflection and political attacks to which we are so accustomed in the Chamber, will speak volumes to the families who are in the Public Gallery today. They do not want more buck-passing, more blame and more political point-scoring in the Chamber; they demand full transparency about the decision-making process around those schemes.

The Assembly has been recalled to give voice to the frustrations felt by parents, schools and the wider public, who are horrified by how the ordeal has been handled. We must send a clear message today that the rights of children with additional needs are not optional or secondary, that such support cannot be switched on and off by Departments as and when it suits and that those children's families should never again be used as pawns in a game of political chicken between two Ministers. We need guarantees, not a vague assurance, that the mistake will never be repeated, and we need a clear cross-departmental commitment and a plan to ensure that nursing provision, staffing and SEN support are stable, sustainable and protected. That is the least that families should be able to expect from two Departments that, collectively, receive over 71% of the Executive's Budget. SEN children and their families deserve consistent, meaningful support, not chaos, not confusion and not, frankly, the incompetence that we have witnessed over the past week. No child in our society should ever be an afterthought. They deserve Ministers who get it right the first time.

I commend the motion to the Assembly.

Some Members: Hear, hear.

Mrs Mason: I beg to move amendment No 1:

Mr Speaker: Thank you. You will have 10 minutes in which to propose amendment No 1 and five minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. Please open the debate on amendment No 1.

Mrs Mason: Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle.

The confusion and chaos of the past week around the cancellation of summer schemes in our special schools have been nothing short of a disgrace, but let us call it what it is: a crisis of the Minister's making. He knew about it for months, and what did he do? Nothing. There was no urgency, no leadership and no plan. Instead, while families here cry out for support, the Minister is off chasing his TransformED pet projects, travelling abroad, visiting Israel and the occupied territories, cheerleading an illegal war and rubbing shoulders with warmongers, all while failing the most vulnerable children at home. That is the reality, and the consequences have been devastating. The decision has caused unnecessary distress to families who already have to fight tooth and nail for every bit of support for their precious child: families who plan their entire year around those summer schemes and depend on them not as a luxury but as a necessity. The cancellation did not have to happen, but, instead of stepping up and doing the work, the Minister took the easy road. He cut the service. Let us be honest: it was a cowardly decision.

Minister, a family contacted my office and asked me to raise this directly with you in the House today. Each year, they get one short holiday. They rely on the summer scheme as respite. It provides the only opportunity that they have to get away each year. When the news broke last week, they cancelled their holiday out of fear. They now watch you scramble, unsure that anything will actually replace what you took away. That mother asked me to ask you whether you will still get your summer holiday this year, because her family may not.

I also acknowledge Alma White and the Caleb's cause campaign. That family knows all too well the reality facing so many others and the devastating impact that decisions such as this have on families across the North. These schemes are not optional extras; they are lifelines. For children, they are joy; they are routine; they are friendship; and they are a chance to learn and grow in a safe and familiar environment. For parents, they are a breathing space: a moment to rest, to reset and to cope.

Let us not forget the pressure that this has piled on to our special schools' principals and staff. Already stretched to their limits, they are now left scrambling to deal with the fallout that this unnecessary decision and consequent U-turn have caused. One principal told me that they felt sick to their stomach about having to deliver the news to the families. Many staff members rely on that week or two of summer scheme work, and others give up their precious time with their families during the summer: you have pulled the rug from under them, too.

Minister, you have long been aware of the crisis in on-site nursing provision in special schools. You should have lifted the phone and worked with your colleague in the Department of Health, with special schools and with children in specialist provision to try to expand the summer schemes so that those children could access them, not taken them away from the most vulnerable.

Instead of addressing the issues that matter to people, what did you spend your time on last week, Minister? You chose to instruct officials to draft a written ministerial statement attacking two female Members simply because they dared to question your decisions, bruising your fragile ego. That speaks volumes about your priorities.

Minister, I am not here to agree with you or to rubber-stamp your poor decisions; I am here to hold you to account, to challenge you when you get it wrong and to stand up for the families who are too often left fighting on their own. On this issue, you have failed them. The Assembly has already agreed a vote of no confidence in you; school leaders have lost confidence in you; and the teachers, classroom assistants and special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) who come to us every day have lost confidence in you. After this week, Minister, families who have already been through so much hurt and anger have also lost confidence in you.

I ask you again today, plainly and clearly: will all summer schemes in special schools definitely go ahead this year? With no spin, no deflection and none of your usual bluster, for the families who are watching today, is the answer yes or no?

Mr Martin: I beg to move amendment No 2:

Mr Speaker: The Member will have up to 10 minutes to propose and five minutes to make a winding-up speech.

Mr Martin: First and most important, I acknowledge the worry, stress and disruption that the initial cancellation of summer schemes caused parents of children with special educational needs in Northern Ireland. I know — other Members have reflected on this — that many parents and families view summer schemes as critical respite at a time of year when it is very much needed. I have visited some of the schemes and witnessed at first hand the social interaction that the children enjoy, their personal development and the sheer fun that they have at the schemes.

The sudden prospect, when the initial announcement came out, of losing that support was, understandably, overwhelming for many of the parents. I publicly acknowledge that today. Let me say this plainly: the uncertainty and distress that many families experienced should not have happened. However, we cannot change the past, and I will come back to that.

For the reasons that I have outlined, we have accepted the first half of the Alliance motion. We have no doubt in our minds that the temporary cancellation had a devastating effect, and there is no point in debating that fact in the Chamber today.

It will be helpful to outline the facts that led to the decision, some of which Members have commented on. Initially, the EA highlighted the fact that the level of risk associated with running SEN summer schemes related to the safety of pupils and that that was a significant concern.

We also know that the complexity of special educational needs has changed over the past number of years and that the number of children who attend such schools has risen significantly. It is acknowledged that many of the children who would be attending the summer schools have increasingly complex needs. The Education Authority made it clear that it was prepared to deliver the summer schemes this year provided that the Department of Health could supply the necessary clinical support. It is important to note that special schools' principals have, in the past, shown significant commitment to running schemes, but they have also flagged concerns about the current operating model for clinical cover. In November of last year, the special schools' strategic leadership group raised clear and legitimate issues concerning aspects of the 2025 schemes that needed, it felt, to be addressed. As we all know, healthcare for special schools is complex and is ultimately within the vires of the Department of Health.

I am glad, as, I am sure, are many of the parents of the children affected — many of them are in the Gallery today — that the Education and Health Ministers, along with Health departmental officials, were able to quickly find a solution and to implement it to restore provision, which we have done for this year.

This is all a piece of history, but I wish to look to the future and to spend a few minutes speaking about our amendment.

Mrs Dillon: I appreciate the Member's taking an intervention. The Member referred to the complex needs of those children. That is absolutely correct. Does he agree, however, that the complexity of their needs does not increase in the summer compared with the rest of the year? Many of the schools do not have nurses, which is not ideal, but they do not have them during the year either, so why could they not run the summer schemes?

Mr Martin: I thank the Member for that intervention. I agree that we have an issue with clinical provision in some of our special schools. The Minister may touch on that. That is a legitimate point.

Our amendment leaves the first half of the motion intact, because that is a legitimate expression of how many parents felt about the situation. The second half of the motion basically condemns both Ministers; it does not address the ongoing problems that we have with special educational needs and how we support our most vulnerable children. The second half of the motion, which calls for the schemes to be reintroduced, is now redundant, because the schemes are now progressing.

Our amendment looks at the wider issue of special educational needs. It is a stated Executive priority, and rightly so. However, the Budget for next year, proposed by DOF, places significant pressure on special educational needs, as we have reflected in the amendment. It is worth taking a moment to look at that in detail. The Sinn Féin Finance Minister's draft Budget, which this party has said is unacceptable, puts significant pressure on the Education Minister and particularly on special educational needs as we go into next year.

Mr Baker: Will the Member give way?

Mr Martin: I will.

Mr Baker: Before you go on to pass the buck to the Finance Minister, do you not realise that you are completely tone deaf in everything that you have said? Absolutely tone deaf.

Mr Martin: Clearly, I do not agree with the Member, but I would be happy to give way to him again if he would like to explain to me why the Education Minister's paper on getting additional resources for special educational needs has never made it on to the Executive's agenda. That is actually the responsibility — for anyone watching, I will explain how it works — of the First Minister and the deputy First Minister. Both Ministers have to agree. We are content to get additional resources into special educational needs, but the party opposite has not agreed to it.

I will give the Member the Floor.

Mr Baker: Maybe you will give up on spending millions upon millions of pounds on TransformED. Maybe you will do that.

Mr Martin: He has not answered the question. I am happy to give the Floor back to him if he wants to answer. It is a stated fact that this Minister has requested significant additional money for children with special education needs in Northern Ireland because he views it as a priority. It is the Members opposite who have not agreed to that paper. That request is sitting there having never been tabled.

I will deal with the figures. The Department of Education's total resource pressures, based on the Minister of Finance's Budget from the Members opposite, will be about £600 million going into next year.

For anyone who is watching today, the phrase "resource pressures" is Civil Service speak for the money that a Department needs to break even but has not been allocated. Of the £600 million that the Education Minister needs, one third is money that he requires for special educational needs provision.

I do not want to get into the politics of it all today; I want to look to the future and at how we underpin the entire support network for SEN, rather than deal specifically with one issue. Therefore, whilst the current difficulties with summer schemes are sorted out for this year, we need a coordinated effort to sort out the budget, not only for next year but to deal with future difficulties going forward.

Miss McAllister: Will the Member give way?

Mr Martin: I am sorry, I do not have time. I apologise to the Member.

This party is committed to that objective. The Education Minister has asked for additional funding so that he can underpin the support that is required for SEN. Other parties will have to answer for themselves on their commitment to that objective.

I echo the comments of my colleague and good friend Cheryl Brownlee, who sits on these Benches with me today. Cheryl has a child with special educational needs, and she said publicly that the summer schemes are not a luxury but a lifeline, and I wholly agree with that sentiment. We cannot change the past week for the parents of children who have special educational needs and need summer scheme provision, but I am glad that it has been restored. However, the Chamber should also be looking at what we do in the future to ensure that our most vulnerable are protected. The Minister is also wholly committed to ensuring that. He needs the money to do so, but it is up to others in the Chamber to stand with him and agree on allocating the money to ensure the future for those kids.

As I considered the future of special educational needs provision in Northern Ireland and thought about coming to the Chamber today, I remembered a quote by CS Lewis, who said:

That is a fitting challenge for every person in the Chamber today. I encourage Members to support our amendment.

Mr McGrath: I beg to move amendment No 3:

Mr Speaker: Mr McGrath, you have 10 minutes to propose and five minutes in which to make a winding-speech.

Mr McGrath: Thank you, Mr Speaker. This entire situation has been a stain on the Executive and how they do business. We had Ministers blaming each other and arm's-length bodies taking decisions that impact badly on people. We even had officials not knowing what qualifications their staff have. All the while, no one here was prepared to fess up and take responsibility until the people united and sent a clear message that what was happening was wrong.

We saw two Ministers doing their negotiations on the airwaves, and they had to bow to public pressure — sheer dysfunction. For all the noise, meetings and accusations, who stood up for the children? The cancellation of summer schemes and, indeed, the problems with the provision for children with special educational needs is not new. The pressures around nursing in special schools have been known about for years. They did not arrive overnight; they did not suddenly emerge in March 2026. That raises a very serious question: where has everybody been?

Every single party involved in the Executive is also represented on the Education Authority board. All four Executive parties sit around the Executive table and have reps on the Education Authority board. The minutes of Education Authority board meetings have highlighted that problems were brewing, and all four parties in the Executive and the Education Authority should have known that. All four parties have access to its corporate reporting, governance structures and minutes, and all four should have seen the warning signs. The Education Authority's published papers and Education Committee minutes have repeatedly highlighted workforce pressures, challenges in securing healthcare support and risks to service delivery.

Mrs Mason: I thank the Member for giving way. Does he agree that members of the EA board are appointees and not political representatives? I also point out that they did raise this with us, and I raised the issue with the Minister in a question for written answer, only to be told that it was an operational matter and not to do with him.

Mr McGrath: I thank the Member for her intervention. That just speaks to the dysfunction. The public may have representatives who raise matters, but, if they do not get resolved, that is cold comfort to people out there. We cannot pretend that this is a surprise. It is not; it is a failure of oversight, a failure of grip and, ultimately, a failure of the collective responsibility that there should be in the Executive. That is why our amendment points out an uncomfortable reality, but it is also a truth. The blame shifting and the press releases were poor form. Children with some of the most complex needs were used as leverage in a political row.

Where was the equality impact assessment on this decision from the EA? Some of the most vulnerable were impacted on by its decision. Were their needs taken into consideration, or was this just a chance to score a political point off a different Minister?

What of the Executive? Why were they not recalled to address this? The Executive have power. Ministers could have got round the table, thrashed the problem out and brought solutions. Instead, we saw an amplification of the problem. That is not what people want. They want action, they want solutions, and they want matters to be resolved. They do not want to see grandstanding.

Mr Durkan: I thank the Member for giving way. Does he agree that this debacle, where we have seen vulnerable families used as pawns in political games, is typical of how the Executive do business and highlights a lack of collaboration and collective responsibility between Departments and Ministers? Does he agree that this has also been painfully evident in how the Executive have ducked and dived to dodge any responsibility for the local growth fund fiasco, leaving vital services without funding, valuable staff without jobs and vulnerable people without support?

Mr McGrath: I thank my colleague for raising another important issue that shows the same lack of connection, in that the MO is the same. We should probably have a "Ministry of Problems" for the Executive, but I think that that is just how the Executive are: we never see them address problems. We just see the problems being thrown about in public and people out there being left to deal with the ramifications.

Let me bring us back to where this story belongs. It belongs to the children and their families, including the parents who rely on these summer schemes not as a luxury but as a lifeline that provides structure, care, development and respite. Caring for a child with complex needs is relentless: it is 24/7. It is physically exhausting, emotionally draining and often done with far too little support. For many of those families, those few weeks in the summer are the difference between coping and not coping. That is not political rhetoric; it is a reality that is reflected not just in what we hear in our constituencies but in the wider coverage over the past week by news outlets that have highlighted the deep anxiety, anger and distress caused by this decision. Parents described themselves as "abandoned", and families said that they were being "pushed to breaking point".

Another point that cannot simply be ignored is that it took public pressure, headlines and families speaking out for action to finally happen. We know that ,on Friday, after the issue had been dragged into the public domain, the Department of Health and the Department of Education suddenly found a way forward. Suddenly, there was a solution and progress could be made. While that is welcome, of course, it raises a deeply uncomfortable truth: if a solution could be found on Friday, why was it not found months ago? What is the solution? What nursing cover will be provided? How will it differ from previous years? Will it be a permanent solution, or will the decision be just for this summer?

Once again, we have a dysfunctional Executive presiding over dysfunction, a solution but no detail — more uncertainty. One wonders why families had to go through days of fear and uncertainty. Why did children have to become the centre of a political storm before Departments did what they should have done in the first place, which was sit down and fix the problem? What that tells us is this: the system can work but, too often, it works only when it is forced to do so, and that is not good enough.

Mr Speaker: Before I call Mr Burrows, I ask the Assembly to note that the amendments are mutually exclusive, so if amendment No 1 passes, amendment Nos 2 and 3 will not be called, and vice versa: if amendment No 2 passes, amendment No 3 will not be called, and so forth.

Mr Burrows, you have five minutes, as have all other Members who wish to speak.

Mr Burrows: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is clearly a fundamental moral duty on those of us who are leaders and legislators to support the most vulnerable in society, and there are none more vulnerable than special educational needs children, along with their parents, carers and educators and those who, increasingly, get educated alongside them, sometimes in mainstream schools. That is a duty that we fail in time and time again.

What happened last week should never have happened. We own a collective responsibility for the distress that parents, pupils and educators feel.

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr Burrows: I will not give way. I will come back to you towards the end.

Unfortunately, there has already been finger-pointing and point-scoring, but what the people of Northern Ireland want is collective responsibility. This is just the latest in a litany of failures by the body politic in Northern Ireland to sort out and deliver things. We can point at this issue but we can also point to people who cannot get a home built or a business expanded because the sewerage system is over capacity. There are problems everywhere that we look, and collectively —

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr Burrows: I will not give way.

— we are failing to address them. That failure is because we have failed to fix, reform and focus on things.

Let me deal for a second with the issue of special educational needs children. The exponential rise in the number of children with additional needs has still not been properly and strategically addressed. The number is growing for all kinds of reasons. That comes with a huge cost that the Executive must address collectively, but we have not addressed it collectively. The fact that the paper from the Minister of Education — I have been critical of some of his work and supportive of other aspects of his work — has not been put on the Executive table is a fundamental failure, in the same way that other papers do not get on the Executive table because they are vetoed, which is totally inappropriate.

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr Burrows: No, I am not going to give way.

There are issues for the Education Authority to look at. Those include workforce planning, so that there can be sustainable schemes running throughout the summer, and the EA needs to consider why those who are skilled and trained in term time are not the same people who deliver the summer schemes. We need to look at how we support classroom assistants. As I said in my maiden speech, we say that we value them but that is not recognised in their pay packets or their accreditation. They get to the top of their pay scales far too soon. Retention is a major issue, and because there is sometimes a desperation to get classroom assistants, we have the wrong people doing an important job, although the vast majority of them do it very well. Good classroom assistants are worth their weight in gold.

We fail SEN pupils in all kinds of ways. We could not get even two weeks of summer schemes up and running this year. Thankfully, the intervention has been made, but summer schemes should be much longer. Why on earth are special schools shut for nine weeks? That is something that the Assembly needs to deal with. Parents whose children attend special schools tell me that they want to work. They want to contribute to the workforce and have a career but they cannot because they do not get enough support through childcare, respite and summer schemes. It is penny wise and pound foolish because those parents tell me that the progress that their child makes throughout term time is often set back when they are not at school for seven of the nine weeks, and they then have to play catch-up. This is not just about respite for the parents. It is about the opportunity for the special educational needs child to be able to get a job in the future, perhaps, or to live independently. All of that is set back when you have those big gaps: the parents cannot work, and there is desperation because they wait for so long for a diagnosis.

That is on all of us, because we have failed to fix things. We could find £600 million — if that is what is required — if we did not have so much waste. How much money are we wasting on procurement that has not been properly sorted out? Why is it that school principals, as well as every other public-sector body, spend 400% more to get a job done than it would cost if a local trader were to do it? That is where the money is going. There is vast waste and a failure to reform. I sit on the Education Committee, and, this year, we have not debated school nurses, but we have debated Gaza. That is a disgrace, but it is what is happening across the piece. We fail to focus on the right things, we fail to fix the right things, we fail to reform this place and then we point-score and finger-point.

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr Burrows: I will not give way. I am glad that there will be summer schemes this year. We need to look at getting things sorted for next year, but we also need to look at ourselves. Sackcloth and ashes are in order today. The way in which we are treating the people of Northern Ireland is shameful. I support our amendment No 2.

Mr Sheehan: It is often said that society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Among our most vulnerable citizens are our children and young people with additional needs — some with very complex needs. They deserve to have a summer scheme, and their families deserve to have some respite from the 24 hours a day that they spend caring for their children. Those children and their families are paying the price for the failure of the Education Minister. Our most vulnerable citizens have been cast to the side by a Minister who believes that there are more important issues, such as spending a quarter of a million pounds on phone pouches, which is one of his pet projects.

Summer schemes for children and young people with special needs are often the only opportunity that parents get to have a holiday. I wonder whether Paul Givan —.

Mrs Dillon: I thank the Member for taking an intervention. Does the Member agree that all this distress could have been avoided and that this is causing deep distress to families who are already under the most immense pressure?

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Sheehan: I absolutely agree. If anybody wants to see my email inbox, I can show you the number of parents who have contacted us about the issue.

I wonder whether Paul Givan thought about those parents when he was in Washington recently rubbing shoulders with the notorious rapist in the White House, or when he jetted off to Israel to hobnob with wanted war criminals — the very people who are responsible for killing 25,000 children in Gaza and the destruction of the complete education infrastructure. Of course, the Minister's conscience was not pricked then, so why should we be surprised that he would deny a summer scheme to relatively few children with special needs here? I do not detect any empathy there at all.

I am sick, sore and tired of asking the Minister and his officials about the level of cooperation and collaboration that exists between his Department and the Health Department, particularly in relation to children with special educational needs. Unfortunately, it is clear from the answers that I am getting that there is no collaboration. Paul Givan has known for months — for months — that the summer schemes were not going ahead. Can he tell us how many times he lifted the phone and called Mike Nesbitt to try to get it sorted out? Can he tell us what his officials did to resolve the issue? I can tell you what was done: zero; zilch; nothing. The Education Minister obviously thought that it was not an important enough issue for him to bother intervening in — until, that is, it blew up in the media. I will tell you what he will say. He will say that it was an operational decision for the EA and nothing to do with him. Time and time again, children with special educational needs and their families are paying the price for the failure of the Education and Health Ministers to work together. That is a disgrace of epic proportions, and it is that Minister's fault.

Mr Buckley: Will the Member give way?

Mr Sheehan: No.

In fairness to the Education Minister, perhaps he was too busy with other issues. Last week, for example, just before recess, he managed to get two written ministerial statements out. One attacked two female MLAs from the Education Committee who had had the temerity to criticise some of his policy. The Minister does not like criticism, especially when it comes from women. The other statement was a correction to an answer that he had given in the Chamber to a question on whether he had ever been accused of bullying. Yes, the Minister is a busy man.

I welcome the Minister's U-turn on the summer schemes, even though the matter should never have reached this point. However, we are hearing from sources within the EA that it still might not be capable of ensuring that the summer schemes will go ahead, so we need to hear unequivocally from the Minister today that they will proceed. He needs to urgently publish a timeline so that families know when schemes will take place and when they will receive the information that they need.

Mr Kearney: Will the Member give way?

Mr Sheehan: Briefly, yes.

Mr Kearney: Does the Member agree that, for those of us who have raised children with special educational and complex needs who have become adults and live with us today, a U-turn on the summer schemes is not enough? We need a reset in how our children and adults with educational, complex and additional needs are treated, not only by the Education Department but by the Health Department.

Mr Sheehan: I could not agree more.

At the outset, I said:

I hope that society in general will not be blamed for this debacle. That distinction belongs to the Education Minister, Paul Givan. Stand up and take a bow, Minister. You will always be remembered for withdrawing bursaries that went to children from disadvantaged backgrounds to enable them go to the Gaeltacht. Now, you can add another string to your bow, as the Minister who could not be bothered to organise summer schemes for children with special educational needs.

Ms Forsythe: I declare an interest as Assembly private secretary to the Education Minister and someone whose mum is employed as a classroom assistant.

This past week has been an incredibly stressful time for many parents, children and school staff. I do not underestimate in any way what that has meant to so many, and there has been great relief expressed to me by a range of constituents on the reinstatement of the scheme. I am pleased that a resolution on the 2026 summer schemes has been arrived at, and I welcome the intervention of the Health and Education Ministers in resolving the operational issue. However, the high-profile response to the risks facing summer schemes should not be used and abused as yet another opportunity for petty and cheap political point-scoring. Sadly, that has been widespread in this case. Those who engage in such behaviour let themselves down further. Danny Baker should, to use his own words, reflect upon his behaviour and that of his colleagues, which has been tone-deaf.

Safety should be paramount in special schools. The safety and safeguarding of pupils and staff are so important. Risk assessments are essential in those facilities. The complexity of needs has been increasing each year. The higher risk in recent years has often meant that there is a reliance on the goodwill of principals and staff. Everyone needs to work together here.

We should be sitting up and listening to the response to take on board the huge impact that losing those summer schemes would have had on parents and children. We must also recognise how much worse things will be if it is not just the summer schemes that are at risk but the entire school system Those risks, throughout the year, are genuine and real.

The Education Minister has raised those risks consistently. On 16 September 2025, he called for a flagship Executive investment programme to transform educational facilities for children with special educational needs. His proposals were for a £1·7 billion, Executive-led, SEN capital investment programme, ring-fenced over the next 10 years. That strategic initiative would transform the infrastructure, supporting Northern Ireland's most vulnerable learners. In submitting the proposals, the Minister said:

However, it is sad to note that, some six months after initially being tabled, the Education Minister's Executive paper on capital funding for special educational needs has not been put on the Executive agenda.

Mr Buckley: I thank the Member for giving way. Does the Member agree that many of the barbed, political attacks from the parties opposite ring hollow in light of the evidence that she has presented to the House?

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Member for his intervention. I completely agree. I also note that the issue of special educational needs is an Executive priority in the Programme for Government. How can anyone say that they support that Programme for Government objective and then fail to allow it to be discussed and planned for around the Executive table?

I fully agree with the Education Minister's point that it is not just an education issue; it is a societal obligation. We must invest in facilities, empower our children, support our teachers and uphold our commitment to inclusion and equality.

I call on the Minister of Finance to provide adequate funding to the Department of Health and the Department of Education to ensure that children with special needs can be properly supported throughout the year. Will the Finance Minister show that he can stand up and do that, or will he have, in the words of Cathy Mason, "no leadership and no plan"?

We have witnessed the publication of a draft multi-year Budget that will mean significant cuts to education, despite clear commitments about what it would mean. The non-statutory services in the Education Department will be cut if the Budget is applied. It is a Sinn Féin-proposed Budget that will mean education cuts. Sinn Féin Members regularly slate the Education Minister for cuts to every single service in education, including youth services recently, yet it is their Finance Minister who is imposing the cuts.

Members of the public deserve better. They deserve honesty. It does not suit the Sinn Féin agenda of the past to speak to honesty, and, clearly, it does not suit its present agenda, but let us get real: if there is not enough money, services will be cut across the board, and people in our community will suffer. We need to get serious about working together to address this. We need to mitigate the impact on people, not mislead them or frame this for cheap political gain.

The UK Treasury recently recognised the huge increase in demand for SEN services across the entire United Kingdom and awarded additional funding to local councils in England. In Northern Ireland, we receive Barnett consequentials, and we are due to receive £380 million over the next three years. I look forward to the updated Budget proposals from the Finance Minister showing that being applied to our SEN services across Education and Health in Northern Ireland.

People in Northern Ireland are under immense pressure in their homes, their businesses and their families. Families with children with additional needs are not pawns in anyone's game. They need long-term, sustainable support, not just a sticking plaster. Today is about so much more than summer schemes. We have been able to satisfy one small aspect of the issue that we face across special schools, and we need further support throughout the academic year.

I call on the Finance Minister to invest not only in the buildings but in the hope, opportunity and dignity of every child who relies on us all here to get it right.

Mr Mathison: The original call in the motion was for the reinstatement of the summer schemes, but the motivation behind the motion and the recall was to ensure accountability for the decisions taken. Therefore, it is right that we still have the opportunity today to debate the issues and to try to understand the extraordinary chain of events that led to the schemes being pulled and, within 24 hours, reinstated last week.

It is important to be clear — many Members have reflected it already — that the concerns about the adequacy and safety of nursing provision in our special schools throughout the year have been well documented for years, and, by extension —.

Mr McMurray: Will the Member give way?

Mr Mathison: Yes.

Mr McMurray: Does the Member agree, which may mean disagreeing with Mr Burrows, that nursing provision is required in special schools all year round, including during term time?

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Mathison: Absolutely. I concur with the Member. School principals across Northern Ireland have consistently raised with me their concern that we should not be operating a postcode lottery whereby some trusts provide nurses and others do not. That is an unacceptable state of affairs.

By extension, if there are concerns around the safety of provision in our special schools during term time, it is clear that those concerns and safety issues will be heightened when it comes to summer schemes taking place outside normal operating arrangements. The Health Minister and Education Minister know all that.

The Education Minister made his first statement on the summer schemes and, specifically, the 2026 summer scheme, on 27 March, and it was very clear. He stated:

Both Ministers have confirmed that they were at that meeting. It is clear that they understood that nursing provision was essential in order for those schemes to go forward, yet — this is what I cannot understand — they both stood by and allowed the decision to be made to cancel the schemes. I cannot accept that they were unaware that that decision was about to be made on Wednesday last week. Does the Education Minister really expect us to believe that he takes an approach where he sits back and lets the arm's-length body make a decision that he does not consent to, agree with or believe that he has scope and capacity in his role as Minister to change? That appears to be what we are being asked to believe. Not only does that stretch credulity to the limit but it feels unforgivably insensitive to the impact on parents.

If all that it took to resolve the matter was for the two Ministers to take a few hours on a Friday, give it a bit of attention and maybe nudge the arm's-length body or the trusts in the right direction, what on earth had they been doing in the previous months? We knew that those issues were brewing. Members are right: we knew that they were brewing. It had been raised at the Education Committee that the relevant director in the EA had highlighted nursing provision from the minute that he took up post as one of his priority actions to resolve, because he was so concerned about the issues.

As far as I can tell, the EA has been desperately trying to get engagement with the Health Department on those issues but it was not forthcoming, and both Ministers appear to have taken a back seat. As far as I can tell and as has been mentioned already, the Children's Services Co-operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 should have kicked those two Ministers into action the moment that the fact that the schemes were at risk came on to their radar. Their decision not to intervene earlier is a failure of leadership, and parents, many of whom are here today, feel profoundly let down as a result.

Today, we really need answers. The Education Minister will make the formal response to the debate. I welcome his presence in the Chamber, and I hope that he will sincerely and graciously address the concerns of parents who are watching closely. I have a number of questions that I hope he can answer without deflection. I hope that we can avoid playing politics with the issue, because parents are listening and seeking answers and clarity. That needs to be every Member's focus in the Chamber. It is not about who wins. Nobody wins today. We need our children with special educational needs and their parents to win.

My first question is this: if the issue was resolved over the course of a few hours on a Friday — I genuinely want to understand this, and parents are asking me this — why did the Education Minister and Health Minister let things go not just to the brink but right over it to the point of cancellation, throwing parents into complete panic, before they acted to resolve the situation? I genuinely seek clarity on that point. It has been raised by other Members, and it is crucial that we get an answer on the record, because confidence among parents is at such a low ebb right now.

Mr Tennyson: Will the Member give way?

Mr Mathison: I will give way very briefly.

Mr Tennyson: Does the Member agree that confidence is really important if we are to make any progress on the wider SEN reform and the agenda that the Minister says he wants to prioritise?

Mr Mathison: Absolutely. Both the Education Minister and the Health Minister have huge transformation agendas in their in trays. It is vital that we bring the public with us with confidence on those issues.

My next question is this: what will provision look like this year? I ask the Minister to address whether he has received assurances from his EA colleagues that those schemes can and will be delivered safely this year, not just when it comes to nursing provision but the whole provision. It is essential that we get clarity on that point, because parents are genuinely concerned. Has he received those direct assurances from his EA colleagues about the safety of the schemes in 2026?

Finally, I hope that both Ministers will commit, under the provisions of the Children's Services Co-operation Act, to working in genuine partnership. I hope that we hear from the Education Minister today that he will ensure that, by working with the Health Department, we see a long-term, sustainable model to deliver those summer schemes, that we get safe medical provision in our special schools and that solutions will be delivered in that space. I hope that we get the answers that parents are asking for.

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Ms Brownlee: I was as devastated as anyone here to see the EA's social media post last week that announced the cancellation of the summer schemes, but I do not want anyone to think that the debate is simply about one week of a summer programme. It is just the tip of the iceberg. It is another devastating blow to children with special educational needs and their families.

It is so hard to express what life is really like as a parent of a child with SEN and the weight that it places on every aspect of your life. Those parents are not just struggling; they are just about surviving. It is a struggle every single day to get through to the next one. It is intense and relentless, and you are often in a constant state of fight or flight.

Simple tasks that many people take for granted, such as a trip to the shop, can feel impossible. Families become isolated as friends move on with their own children, and they are left behind. The village that we often speak of — the support network that it takes to raise a child — becomes smaller and smaller, as many feel unable to cope with the challenges involved.

For some families, there is nothing left but the support provided by the education system just to get through the day, and, when summer arrives, those eight weeks can feel impossibly long. Summer holidays, which should be a time of joy, are not the same for our children. A simple trip to the park or the zoo can become overwhelming and unmanageable. Many families find themselves confined to their home or to their child's one safe space, thereby becoming further isolated and struggling even more. We must be honest about the harsh reality of life for some of our SEN children who have significant physical and behavioural challenges. That means biting, hitting and self-harming behaviour such as head-banging. When routines are disrupted, those challenges intensify, leaving parents completely exhausted and often at breaking point, physically and mentally.

Every Saturday, I sit with parents at a small group in Monkstown called Monkstown Special Stars. It was my lifeline and still is. I listen to families who face challenges that are far more complex than mine, and I see the quiet resilience that they show every day. Many are so desperate for support that they seek assessments from social workers, only to be turned away because of the pressure on the system or budget constraints. Direct payments are a distant dream, and respite care is out of reach. In that context, summer schemes are not a luxury; they are a lifeline. Even one or two weeks can make the difference between coping and complete burnout. We often speak about families reaching breaking point, but the truth is that they are already there. They simply keep going because they have no choice. No one is coming to rescue them. Criticising the EA or the health service will not improve the lives of those children or of the families who are here today.

We must recognise the complexity of the situation. No one wants summer scheme provision to be unsafe. No principal, teacher or classroom assistant should be expected to take on responsibilities for which they are not supported or trained. Concerns raised by staff must be listened to. The reality is that specialist nursing provision has been reduced. Schools have been calling for this for some time. Summer schemes are not straightforward, staff can differ from those in term time, and familiarity with children's needs is not always there. For such programmes to succeed, every individual involved must feel safe, supported and equipped. That is not the case.

I welcome the fact that appropriate nursing provision has now been granted. Hopefully, the schemes can proceed. However, it is extremely concerning and disappointing that we are here today. Thankfully, the Ministers have worked hard to get the provision back up and running. SEN is a priority for the Government — there is agreement on that across the House — but, if that is truly the case, it must be a priority for us all: for Health, Education and Finance.

Perhaps the one positive outcome from today is that the debate has highlighted the strength of public feeling and society's willingness to stand up for our most vulnerable. We must now move beyond words. We must work together, learn from what has happened and take meaningful action. The issue should unite us all here today. Families who are affected do not care who gets credit or attracts a headline; they just care whether their child is safe and supported. If we are serious about making SEN a priority, we must all start delivering consistently, together and with urgency for those young people and their families.

Miss McAllister: Our motion describes the summer schemes as "vital" and "a lifeline" for children and their families. That reality cannot be overstated. I recognise that the comments being made across the Chamber are trying to touch on the reality of the day-to-day lives of parents and their children. I also recognise and respect the fact that the debate is not about political point-scoring and must be about those families. However, without accountability, there will never be change. That is important.

Much of the focus today has been on the Department of Education, and rightly so, but Departments must work together. I will spend a lot of my time today on the Department of Health and the Health Minister's responsibility in the area. When the troubling announcement was made last week, we all heard straight away from parents whose children, at the time, were still in school and were just about to enter their Easter break. Those parents were already stressed about the lack of respite that they had. Their common theme was that the summer schemes were a form of respite not just for the families but for the children.

The fact that families have to rely on education settings to provide much-needed respite services is a dire indictment of the actions of the Department of Health. I have spoken so many times in the Chamber about the 'Spotlight' documentary 'I Am Not Okay', which aired 18 months ago. Following that documentary, the Health Minister committed to investing £13·1 million in respite services. However, from my ongoing contact with the families involved and numerous others trying to access respite services that they have been approved to receive, I know that they have not been able to do so.

The Health Committee was told just two weeks ago that things were OK and that many of the families were happy. However, following the Committee's briefing from the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust and the briefing from the Health Minister last Thursday, I was again contacted by the families, along with the National Autistic Society, who said, "I am not OK". MLAs were reminded that the aim of the campaign was to ensure that respite facilities for families in crisis were introduced and that additional residential and overnight respite beds were added to the system. However, no matter how many times I have asked the Minister, his officials or officials from the various trusts about that, they have maintained that the additional £13·1 million investment was not just about increasing beds. We have seen progress, but that has been minimal, and the fact remains that overnight respite has not been restored to pre-COVID levels, which were not good enough even then.

Last week, we were informed that a trust had sent money — £200 or £500 — to families who, whether or not they were in receipt of direct payments, had been approved for respite care. The trust could not provide respite for them, so it thought, "We'll leave it to you". One of the families contacted me by phone, saying that they had looked for private help. They were quoted £52 an hour for such help and provided me with proof of that quote. If a trust cannot provide respite, how can we expect parents to do so? I understand that some children require four-to-one, three-to-one or even two-to-one support, but many of the mothers who look after their children at home do so on a one-to-one basis, and we expect them to cope. However, they cannot do it any more, and many of these —.

Mr Donnelly: Will the Member give way?

Miss McAllister: Yes.

Mr Donnelly: Does the Member agree that all forms of respite are a lifeline to the families of children with additional needs, some of whom are at the edge of crisis, and that this issue is too important for another U-turn such as that on the real living wage? Ministers must guarantee that all forms of respite, including these schemes, will be delivered.

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Miss McAllister: I absolutely agree with the Member.

Yesterday, I spoke on the phone to another mother, who was in a dire state, about the lack of summer scheme provision. When I told her that there had been a U-turn — she had not realised that — she asked, "What was the point of it?". What was the point of it?

Parents have spoken about why they are at crisis point. Today's debate is not just about summer scheme provision; we are here because parents are at breaking point and in crisis. Parents are having to relinquish the care of their child to the state, because they simply cannot go on. It was so distressing that the announcement was made at the start of the Easter break, not just for government but for families, who will have to cope over the next two weeks. I hope that the strength of the public reaction has shown the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education how important the services are.

I will end with this: why is it that children with additional needs — complex needs — and their parents constantly have to fight for their basic rights? They constantly have to fight to be heard and for their children to be assessed and diagnosed, for respite and for SEN school provision. That has to change.

Mr Gaston: In my 21 months as an MLA, I have witnessed some shameless hand-wringing in the Chamber, but what we have seen since we last sat in the Chamber, one week ago, has taken that to another level.

Cancelling the SEN summer schemes was not simply an administrative misstep but a failure of the most vulnerable children in our society — a failure created in the Department of Health and the Department of Education.

Summer schemes for children with special educational needs are not an optional extra; they are, for many families, a lifeline. They are not something for which families should have to take to the airwaves and plead; they are not something on which an announcement should be made just before the Assembly goes into recess; and they are not something about which those families should have to embarrass MLAs into coming back to the Chamber to discuss.

My goodness, the Education and Health Ministers are both keen enough to appear before the House when they think that they have something to take credit for. The announcement was made even worse by the crass procession of each Minister's party faithful, and others who prop up the Departments, wringing their hands and declaring their unconditional support for the very schemes that their Ministers should never have allowed to be cancelled in the first place. As one parent put it, "It won't be forgotten".

Let us recap what we have witnessed over the past week. The Ulster Unionists said that they could not wait to meet the EA. The DUP said that it wanted to meet Health officials. Instead of lifting the phone to each other, the two Ministers would rather play to the gallery. Their parties wanted the social media hits, rather than the Ministers lifting the phone to each other to sort this mess out before an announcement was made —

Mr Butler: Will the Member give way?

Mr Gaston: — that led to —

Mr Butler: Will the Member give way?

Mr Gaston: — the anxiety of many families who are represented today by those in the Public Gallery. I am happy to give way.

Mr Butler: I thank the Member for giving way. You are two minutes and 30 seconds into your speech and have not once mentioned the kids with special educational needs. All you have done is attack —

Mr Gaston: Thank you very much for the intervention, Mr Butler.

Mr Butler: — politically. Will you return to the children in need? Thank you.

Mr Gaston: I wonder whether, here today, either Department will actually take responsibility for cancelling the summer schemes for the most vulnerable children in our society.

The EA tried to drop the announcement when the Assembly was going on holiday, so do not try to tell me that the whole thing does not stink. The whole sorry episode boils down to nothing more than a political game, with the most vulnerable children in our society and their families being used, shamelessly, as pawns.

Political calculations were made. The Department of Health does not believe that there is a need for nursing provision in SEN schools. The EA believes otherwise. A year out from the election, with the uproar and distress that this was always going to cause, the generals in the shadows decided to draw their battle lines. It has been a shameful episode, and each one of us in the House must ensure that vulnerable children will never again be used to sort out a political disagreement.

Yes, I welcome the U-turn and the relief that it has brought to many families, but that must not obscure the question that hangs over the entire episode. How did we get to this point in the first place? How did the proposal emerge? My goodness, it removed such a vital service when, as we are now told, the resources could be found, and they were found when the political pressure was put on. That points to something deeper than one single decision; it points to a failure to prioritise.

Earlier, Mr Martin referred to the decision as being "a piece of history". No, no, no, that will not save the blushes of the Education Minister or the Minister of Health. The Ministers responsible must set out clearly, here today, how the situation arose, what options were considered and why it took public pressure to secure a reversal. Did the Ministers not know? If they did not, well, what else is going on in their Departments, under their noses, that they have not noticed? Alternatively, did they simply not care? If it is the latter, all the platitudes that we have heard today are hollow. The blunt truth of the matter for Mr Nesbitt and Mr Givan is that the answer to why we are here today is contained in the affirmative response to one of those two questions.

We have heard many warm words from each side of the Chamber, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. When the £380 million comes to the Executive, what will it be spent on? The £380 million is coming here over three years because of special educational needs provision funding in England. Will the Executive prioritise that funding for SEN provision in Northern Ireland? I certainly hope that they will. Let us put the words into actions. We have heard the warm words today.

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Gaston: Let us see what you do with the £380 million when it comes here from Whitehall.

Mr Carroll: What happened last week was a masterclass in chaos by the Executive. The Education Authority announced on Thursday that summer schemes in special schools would not go ahead this year. There was no consultation with parents and no alternative was offered. Instead, there was just a cold bureaucratic announcement that upended the lives of thousands of families overnight.

Parents were left devastated. We have heard accounts of parents who were unable to sleep on Thursday night as they were consumed with worry about how they would manage the summer and the cost of private care that they simply cannot afford. I will wager that the Education Minister slept soundly that night because he thought that it was not his problem to solve. The parents were the ones who carried that anxiety and bore the weight of his abject failure.

The cruellest part of this shameful episode is that it did not have to happen at all. In fewer than 24 hours, both Ministers performed a full U-turn: the nursing support was found, and the schemes were back on — problem solved, or so we were told. The question that every parent is now entitled to ask, and to which we need an answer, is this: if the resources were there all along, why were families put through that torment? I hope that the Ministers can answer that question. The answer is that the schemes were simply not a priority until the parents and the public made themselves impossible to ignore. I commend those parents for their immediate and furious opposition, which forced those Ministers to do the right thing. That pressure worked last week, and it can work again.

I have also been contacted by parents of children with additional needs, including those with severe learning difficulties, who attend mainstream schools. They have no summer schemes to avail themselves of, and they should not be punished because they lost out in the lottery of school placements. Those families want to see wholescale reform of a broken system and full equality across the board for children with SEN.

As Alma White and others have said, if a U-turn is possible in 24 hours, what else could we achieve with genuine political will in 24 hours, weeks and months? The same logic applies across the Executive's record of failure. Caleb's cause campaigners are absolutely right that parents should be able to access SEN provision for their children beyond the age of 19, and that fight must be won, but they have also been failed by the Executive. The senseless decision not to ring-fence the Youth Service budget could also be reversed, which would guarantee thousands of young people the safe spaces, youth workers and late-night provision that they desperately need and deserve.

We should also not lose sight of the fact that adults with disabilities and additional needs are failed on the daily by the Executive. Some of my constituents pay several thousand pounds a year for ADHD medication and other associated healthcare treatments because they cannot get a diagnosis and support from our underfunded and failing health service. My constituents and, no doubt, those of others, lose a large sum of money every month from their personal independence payments because they have been put in care homes instead of supported living places, because, lo and behold, those places do not exist. People with disabilities are being failed as well.

I missed the start of the contribution by the Member who proposed the motion, but I do not disagree with anything that I heard him say. However, his party and Sinn Féin should be careful because they constantly talk about making efficiencies and savings in services, and this is where that road leads. In recent times, every time you have talked about efficiencies and railed against the duplication of resources, people with disabilities are the ones who have been put on the chopping block. I urge those Members to be careful about that political approach.

Rumours are swirling that there may be a deal in the Executive about the local growth fund. I do not know, and I am not part of the Executive. However, the disastrous decision by Westminster to strip away the local growth fund will have a massive impact on front-line services, threatening hundreds of jobs and tens of thousands of vulnerable people in the process. The Executive can and should step in today — right now — and prevent that catastrophe.

Last week's fiasco proved one thing: bad decisions are not inevitable; they are choices that can be reversed when ordinary people refuse to accept them.

Mr Speaker: I call the Education Minister to respond. Minister, you have up to 20 minutes.

Mr Givan (The Minister of Education): Thank you. Mr Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to respond to the debate and set the record straight. I will follow in the same vein as the Chairman of the Education Committee, who set the right tone in holding me and the Minister of Health to account and in seeking genuine information. I will set the record straight on a number of points that have been raised, and, in due course, I will get to the questions that Mr Mathison raised.

It is, unfortunately, clear from today's debate that the agenda of some Members who have spoken is to exploit the issue for party political purposes. Mr Sheehan said that a mark of society is how it treats the most vulnerable. Then, shamelessly, Sinn Féin Members abused children with special educational needs for narrow party political advantage. They owe an apology. I trust that Mr Baker, or whoever winds, will apologise on behalf of Sinn Féin for the things that have been said by its Members to use children to pursue their vendetta around Israel, President Trump and the personal vitriol that they have towards me. That is shameless, and it is they who should reflect on being "tone-deaf" in this debate — I see that Mr Baker is smirking from the Back Benches. That is not what Members, those in the Public Gallery or the wider public want to listen to. I will not allow Sinn Féin to cause any more harm to children, so I will not allow interventions from those on its Benches. I will give way to Members outside of Sinn Féin, but, after the way that that party has disgracefully behaved in the debate, not to its Members.

Let me say from the outset that supporting children with special educational needs is an Executive priority, as stated in the Programme for Government. As such, it requires the input and support of the whole Executive. All Departments need to be more willing to see it as such and bring their resources to the table for areas in which they have a policy remit and a practical contribution to make.

There is a tendency to see this as a Department of Education issue alone and a reluctance to commit more than warm words. The summer scheme situation is an example of that. The Education Authority quite simply cannot provide those schemes safely on its own; it needs the support and investment of others. I cannot stress enough how important summer schemes are for children at special schools and their families.

My colleague and good friend Cheryl Brownlee spoke passionately about how much this means to her as a parent of a child who will benefit from this particular scheme. Her words, and the words of those parents and families, should prevail on this issue. In 2025, 33 of 40 special schools offered summer schemes. The majority of pupils attending special schools attend those schemes. The summer is a long time for families whose children cannot access mainstream services. Summer schemes provide many benefits for children, allowing for much-needed social interaction with other children, continuity of learning and a sense of routine. They also provide much-needed respite for families and have been described by many as a lifeline, and that is what they are. I have visited many special schools, including, only last week, Willowbridge in Enniskillen. The contribution —

Mrs Mason: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: I am not giving way to any Sinn Féin Members after your behaviour today.

The contribution from principals, teachers, SENCOs and classroom assistants is nothing short of extraordinary. I never fail to be impressed by the wonderful job that they do, week in, week out, in going above and beyond the statutory and contractual role that they have and delivering summer provision in recognition of the challenges that parents face. However, that job is getting increasingly difficult. The special school landscape has seen many changes in recent years, including a significant rise in pupil numbers and an increasing complexity of need. Many of the children who attend a special school have complex medical needs that require specialist knowledge and interventions. I am aware of the difficulties that special schools face in adequately addressing those needs, and I welcomed constructive engagement on the matter with the Minister of Health and school principals as recently as February.

Work is under way to develop a new model of care for children with complex medical needs in special schools, involving officials from my Department, the Department of Health, the Public Health Agency and the Education Authority. There is a real urgency to address those needs for the safety of children in education.

Through that engagement, however, I am aware that the challenge of addressing healthcare needs is particularly acute during summer schemes. The summer provision is not always delivered by the teachers and classroom assistants who know the children best, a point that some Members had not fully grasped when they said that the same teachers and classroom assistants that deliver term-time provision deliver summer scheme provision. That is not the case. Some do, but many do not, and Members ought to be aware of that.

In light of those challenges, the EA had to give careful consideration to the viability of delivering a safe programme of summer activities for 2026. Parents need to know that their children are safe. The EA, which has operational responsibility for special summer schools, had made clear that the level of risk associated with running the schemes, primarily relating to the safety and safeguarding of pupils, was no longer manageable. Are any of us here really going to ask the Education Authority to take a chance with some of our most vulnerable children? Is that what Members are asking it to do? There were also risks to staff and the EA in ensuring safe working practices. Special schools have shown considerable commitment to running schemes in recent years outside term time. However, the EA advised that it was no longer safe to do so.

Mr Mathison: I thank the Minister for giving way. Given that there seems to be acceptance across the board that the summer schemes are vital and need to be delivered, and that the EA, rightly, highlighted safety concerns, did something go wrong with the engagement with Health that meant that we could not get it over the line?

Mr Givan: I will come to that point because there was engagement with Health but an intervention was made by the Health Minister that was critical to making sure that provision would be made available. I will provide more information about that in due course.

To address those issues and allow summer schemes to continue, senior leaders in the EA engaged intensively with Health officials, including the Chief Nursing Officer, to secure adequate healthcare provision. I understand that significant work was undertaken by the Department of Health to provide proposals for solutions based on training and support. However, the EA did not view that as mitigating the risks sufficiently. The EA deemed that on-site nurses would be required for summer schemes to operate safely. As Minister, I was not prepared to second-guess that analysis, and I suggest that no other Member would have been.

On 24 March, my Department received a letter from the permanent secretary in the Department of Health advising definitively that there was insufficient nursing resource to provide on-site nursing for the duration of the schemes this summer. As a result, the EA, reluctantly and belatedly, concluded that it would not be possible to run summer schemes safely in special schools this year. That decision was based on the risks that I have outlined and not on funding. The decision was very much a last resort.

Decisions on running summer schemes are of an operational nature and are, therefore, made by the EA. I would remind those who came here today to criticise the EA, which is seeking to do a difficult job in trying circumstances, that every party on the Executive is represented on the EA board. Indeed, it is obvious to anyone who can count that the largest party represented on the EA board is Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin Member Mrs Mason said that they are not political reps but appointees. They are appointees who are nominated by Sinn Féin. That is the virtue by which they are appointed to the EA board.

Regarding timing, the EA wanted, quite rightly, to give the Department of Health as long as possible to consider the request, and come forward with the required support. The deadline to do so was repeatedly extended. I only wish that the confirmation of additional nursing cover had been received earlier, as the decision not to run summer schemes could then have been avoided.

Following the EA announcement on 26 March, I intervened to renew efforts to seek additional nursing support. I engaged directly with the Minister of Health on the issue, and I asked the EA to engage further with the Department of Health to explore every possible option to enable as many schemes as possible to proceed. The EA confirmed that it was prepared to deliver summer schemes this year, provided that the Department of Health could supply the necessary clinical and nursing support. After intense and constructive engagement, last Friday, the Minister of Health confirmed that nursing support would be provided at every summer scheme location.

Mr O'Toole: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: I welcome Minister Nesbitt's intervention on the matter. It should not, however, have taken the intervention of Minister Nesbitt to direct his officials for the correct outcome to be delivered after months of engagements with Health officials —

Mr O'Toole: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: — but I pay tribute to the Health Minister, Mike Nesbitt, for arresting this situation. It ensures that essential clinical oversight will be in place, and it offers a solution in relation to the health risks.

Following that confirmation, on 27 March, the EA's chief transformation officer updated special schools on the joint working between Education and Health, highlighting the fact that appropriate nursing provision would be in place for pupils who require healthcare support during special school summer schemes in 2026. The letter also highlighted the point that the EA will continue to work with special school principals to urgently prioritise planning for the summer schemes.

While the EA will aim to provide delivery that is as close as possible to the delivery that was offered last year, considerable work is now required across multiple partners, including schools —

Mr Donnelly: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: — the EA, the Department of Health and trusts.

Mr Speaker, I heard Mr O'Toole and Mr Donnelly asking me to give way.

Mr O'Toole: I appreciate the Minister's giving way. I want to check a point of information. He mentioned the operational nature of the decision that was made by the EA — it announced that on 26 March. After that, we had the public reaction and the discussion between Health and the EA. Was he informed by the EA before 26 March that summer schemes would be discontinued? It would be helpful to have that point of information.

Mr Givan: Throughout the process — I had engaged on the issue for a number of months — the EA had outlined the health and safety aspects and associated nursing requirements. At the start of last week, I engaged with the EA on the issue, and my permanent secretary engaged with the Department of Health permanent secretary throughout last week on getting information on the consequences of nursing provision not being available. I was aware of that and was actively engaged in seeking a resolution.

Mr Donnelly: I thank the Minister for taking the intervention. The Minister will be aware that SEN and Youth Service sit under the same area in the EA. While it is welcome that SEN summer schemes are going ahead, the EA Youth Service cannot plan past June. How can one confirm for July and August when the other cannot? Will the Minister confirm when the EA's Youth Service budget for 2026-27 will be available and announced?

Mr Givan: It is an entirely separate issue, but I have communicated with the EA on the continuing nature of the spend until the end of June. That reflects the fact that there has not been an agreed Executive Budget, which means that we are unable to commit to the next financial year in its totality.

The position of my Department and the EA remained the same throughout: summer schemes would run if healthcare needs were suitably addressed. That is why the decision announced by the EA last Thursday was taken only as a last resort and when all efforts to run the schemes safely appeared to have been exhausted. I acknowledge that the EA announcement on 26 March was disruptive and that it was difficult for parents and special school pupils. I regret the distress that it caused. On behalf of all involved, I apologise to those parents and pupils. However, I am pleased that we have been able to find a way forward and that the schools that had been intending to operate a summer scheme can do so. That was the outcome that we wanted for families. However, the safety and well-being of children and young people was, rightly, the concern of the EA, as it should be for all of us. Thankfully, the right outcome has been secured.

There needs to be a change of attitude across the Executive. We need to change from an attitude of Departments offering the minimum to one where they stretch themselves to provide the best possible provision for those children and their families.

I turn now to the wider support for children with SEN. I trust that the issue of the summer schemes has been resolved, but greater challenges lie ahead, for which I will need the support of the House and Executive colleagues. As Members will be aware, I published a wide-ranging SEN reform agenda and action plan last February. That programme seeks to transform how we support children with SEN in our education system from the early years through to when the young people leave school.

The five-year delivery plan contains more than 100 actions aimed at improving support across the whole continuum of need: supporting children at stage 1 of the SEN code of practice through providing early intervention; resourcing schools, thereby reducing the reliance on external support; enhancing stage 2 support via the EA's local impact teams; extending the role of the Middleton Centre for Autism; and transforming support at stage 3 for children with a statement of SEN.

All of that is underpinned by a comprehensive programme for training and continuous professional development for teachers and assistants so that we have a skilled and experienced workforce that is collaboratively working with health professionals and the creation of a more inclusive education system.

When I set out my ambitions for SEN reform to the Assembly in January last year, I was clear that it could only be delivered with significant and sustained additional funding and sought the support of the Executive to lever in the required investment. That support has not been forthcoming. I have therefore been constrained in my ability to fully deliver on that ambition. My Department managed to secure a portion of the investment required to kick-start delivery of SEN reform through the public-sector transformation board. Funding of £27·5 million over five years, which represents approximately only 5% of the budget required, was secured to deliver on priority actions that focused on early intervention: transformation of the support model for children with a statement of SEN; building a more inclusive education system; and investing in the professional development of the education workforce.

The central focus for SEN reform is the proposed enhanced support model for children with a statement of SEN. The EA published its consultation document, seeking views on that model, last Tuesday. However, there has already been unhelpful rhetoric that that is about the removal of one-to-one support for children. That is not what this is about, and that narrative creates fear amongst children and families. The new model seeks to enhance support for children by giving schools the autonomy to determine what is needed to best meet the needs of their pupils, widening the support to a range of professionals and interventions, and recognising that, in accordance with evidence, one size does not fit all. It also addresses the unsustainability of the current model.

The pressures on special education placements have been well rehearsed in the Assembly, and they continue, year-on-year. I have delivered more than 2,700 new places in special schools and specialist provision. However, today, we would be well served by speaking honestly and clearly about the SEN capital programme. The programme represents the most structured, strategic plan for special school investment that Northern Ireland has ever seen, but it will remain hollow rhetoric unless it is urgently funded and delivered in full. It has sat, neither discussed nor agreed by Sinn Féin, since September last year. Where, I ask you, is the real commitment to transforming the lives, education and life chances of children with special needs? It is not optional and it is not a luxury: it is the minimum required to keep pace with need and to honour the commitments made to families in the Programme for Government. Sinn Féin Members opposite may want to speak to their party colleagues who are on the Executive.

Members will be aware that I wrote to schools in February, requiring their cooperation with EA in creating more special place provision. That was a necessary step. I have also delivered the preschool inclusion fund for children with SEN in early years, providing investment of almost £5·5 million to preschool settings since the scheme was launched in November 2024. I have seen how beneficial that funding has been.

In spite of the barriers to delivery, I have been doing all that I can to deliver for children with SEN since I have been in office, often without support from other Departments and having reforms opposed, not because they are wrong but for political advantage.

I fully accept that there is much more to do, but I cannot do that alone. I cannot do it without appropriate investment. Sinn Féin Members lambast any changes to service delivery, whilst a Sinn Féin Finance Minister starves Education of funding and proposes a reduced budget. The public see that for what it is. Today, I hope that Members can get behind efforts to provide better support to children and young people with SEN.

This situation should have been avoided. Though it was an operational decision by EA, on which every party is represented, there are lessons to be learned. It also an example that shows that, when two Ministers step in, we can deal with these issues. On behalf of those community groups affected by the local growth fund, I ask: where are the Finance Minister and the Economy Minister? They are not here. There is no recall of the Assembly on that issue. They would not want that.

Make no mistake: I will continue to put forward the needs of our children with special educational disadvantage. Those children are waiting, their families are waiting, the staff are waiting, and the system is waiting. I believe that we can make a change. Those families deserve no less.

It is time to fund transformation, it is time to keep our promises, and it is time to act. Only then will we have transformative, fully funded, long-term investment in dignity, inclusion and the potential of every child.

Mr Speaker: I call Matthew O'Toole to make a winding-up speech on amendment No 3.

Mr O'Toole: 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 —?

Miss Hargey: Will the Member give way?

Mr O'Toole: 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. [Inaudible.]

Mr O'Toole: 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.

Mr Speaker: I call Robbie Butler to wind on amendment No 2.

Mr Butler: Thank you, Mr Speaker. At times, though, I regret to say, not exclusively, the debate has focused not simply on what regrettably happened last week but on what it revealed about how our system operates and when Departments should work together but fail, sometimes, to hit that mark. Last week was an example of such a moment. Saying this will not get me any clicks, likes or shares, but no one in the Chamber deliberately sets out to fail. No Minister, official or service leader wakes up intending to disappoint families, yet disappointment is exactly what our families experience time and again, because, sadly, our culture and systems too often make that outcome predictable.

Ms Sheerin: Will the Member give way?

Mr Butler: I will not. Sorry, I do not have enough time.

The recent crisis around summer schemes in special schools is not a one-off failure. It is a clear example of what the Autism Reviewer describes as a "recurring system pattern", where delivery depends on coordinated action but that coordinated action is not secured in advance. The need for nursing support had been assessed. That has been covered. The value of those schemes is absolutely known. What was missing was the alignment. However, there remain questions to be answered. What has changed since the assessment of previous schemes, and is the same support required for specialist provision in mainstream schools (SPiMS)? That "missing middle", as the Autism Reviewer puts it, is the space between policy intent and lived experience. That, sadly, is where things fall apart. As someone outlined to me yesterday, it is a little bit like doing your knitting on a needle and watching helplessly as the wool falls off that needle.

We see that pattern repeated elsewhere. We see it in the ongoing failure to design and agree meaningful post-19 provision. Young people and their families face a cliff edge, not simply because we lack policy but because we lack clear, joined-up delivery and distinct ownership. I am glad that the Health Minister has put that front and centre at the door of the First Minister and the deputy First Minister for their intervention.

We also see it when children with special educational needs do not receive their school placements at the same time as their peers. That delay is not administrative; it has a deeply felt human impact. We see it in the gaps in the local growth fund, which risk, once again, leaving some of our most vulnerable young people behind, yet some suggest that that is simply someone else's problem.

We must ask ourselves what our role is in all of that. Our role is to ensure that legislation, including the Children's Services Co-operation Act that we passed previously, is not simply admired as a principle but effectively used in practice. Right now, that Act is not being utilised to its full capacity to drive the cross-departmental working that it was designed to secure. That is not simply a rebuke to the Education Minister or the Health Minister; it goes for every one of us in the Chamber. This failure was not deliberate, but if we do not face up to the challenges and move beyond silo working to genuine shared ownership, we cannot escape a difficult truth: our systems will have been proven not to be fit for purpose.

We need a new culture. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement outlined a culture, and we need to get back to its spirit, one that leaves no one behind, is honest with families, does not overpromise but absolutely does not under-deliver. Families should not have to come back here and fight weekly, monthly and yearly to get the systems that they are entitled to and that would support them and their children. Those things should already be there. Delivery must be reliable, not exceptional and certainly not unexpected. I ask Members to support our amendment No 2.

Mr Speaker: I call Danny Baker to wind on amendment No 1.

Mr Baker: Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle.

We are in this position not because of the Executive but because two Ministers could not pick up the goddamn phone to call each other. No excuses, no deflection: that is exactly what it was.

Families are here today watching, and they saw what you did to them last week. You knew about it. Let us not pretend that it is the Executive or the Finance Minister's fault. We know whose fault it was. You did not pick up the phone to talk to each other. You have to take responsibility for that. You cannot say through gritted teeth that it is regrettable and give a half-hearted apology. You need to wholeheartedly apologise to those families and make sure that the summer provision happens. In your speeches, you said, "We will do everything that we can to make sure that it happens". No: it has to happen. Remember that it is not provided for all the children, because you took away the little that they had. Not all children get that support. Do you know why they do not get the support? It is because children are not being placed in the right setting. Time and again, I have said that at the Education Committee. It is my job to scrutinise the Minister and hold him to account. I have said that, if a child gets a golden ticket to a special school, they get more support. Every year, there are children who are not being placed in the right setting.

I remind the House that, last year, around June — we were close to recess again — we had schools closing, and hundreds of children with additional needs had not been placed. Where was our Education Minister? He was in Florida, championing TransformED. Where was the chief executive of the Education Authority? He was in the royal box at Wimbledon. If the issue had been about mainstream children, I can tell you that the Minister and the chief executive would certainly not have been on those trips: absolutely not. They would not have been.

So why are we in this situation, with a U-turn being done? You want to point the finger across the Chamber, but you would not even take an intervention from these Benches. You do not show the respect to be held to account by Members on these Benches for those who gave us a mandate in our communities. Children with additional needs have voices, too. I am here to be their voice, now and always.

To the Health Minister, I say this: not too long ago, you used the Chamber to say that there was no time to legislate in response to Alma White and Caleb's cause. I do not want to single you out too much today, but you tried to do that. It was pointed out to you that that was not the case, but what have you done since then? Alma deserves an apology. You need to work harder to introduce that legislation. The next piece of the puzzle comes from Health. Do not stand here and put it at the First Minister and deputy First Minister's door. It is not their responsibility. To every Minister, I say: let us not gaslight people. You all have your own budgets and priorities. You cannot stand here, take credit, claim praise and get a pat on the back every time that you do something good but, when something goes badly, lay it at the Executive's door. People see right through that. They see through all your social media posts. They see the gaslighting. They do not need it. They want us all to work together.

Can we hit the reset button now and work for the next year? Absolutely. I am up for it. I will stay here until 4.00 am every day, if doing so will mean that legislation goes through that supports those children. Let us not keep calling them vulnerable children: it is the system that makes them vulnerable — the system that you all have authority over. Let us stop pointing fingers and start working. Let us do that today. I say that to every Member. I am up for it.

Let us do a U-turn on Caleb's cause. Let us make sure that funding goes into the Youth Service. Danny Donnelly made a big point, which was that the Youth Service are under attack, because the Minister has not made it one of the Education Authority's priorities. It is only a small part of the budget, which goes to organisations such as Kids Together and Sólás. Those families were on the phone to me last night, saying, "Do you know who will be the first ones to lose out this year, next year or the year after? It will be our children". You should give more, not less. If you want to have a budget, let us agree the three-year Budget. When you get your budget, prioritise it for children who need it the most. I will stand beside you and support you on that, Minister.

Mr Speaker: I call Michelle Guy to make a winding-up speech on the motion.

Mrs Guy: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When I realised that I would be speaking on the motion, I worried about it. I lay awake and worried about it, because I knew then, as I know now with the words in front of me, that I cannot do justice with words to those families' experiences. None of us can, but I will join others across the Chamber in attempting to do so.

What snapped me out of my worry about making this speech was the realisation that it is just not that hard to stand here and deliver a speech. What is hard is being a parent of a child with complex needs who depends on a week or two weeks of a summer scheme for essential respite, only to hear, without consultation or warning, that it is being taken away. That uncertain 24 hours before the U-turn was announced was hard. Some parents were in sheer panic; others were simply broken, so exhausted by the daily fight for services and support that they could not even muster anger. Anger takes energy, and many have so little left.

Being the Minister who has been forced here to respond to the debate and face accountability for the collective failures of his Department is not hard. His doing so is the very least that the families deserve, and that is what they have been conditioned to accept: the very least.

Summer scheme provision is not a luxury, and it is not guaranteed for every family of a child with complex needs. However, that community of families, who look out for one another, advocate for one another and hold one another up, stood up for one another when the announcement came. More than that, on this occasion, the people of Northern Ireland stood with them and said, "Absolutely not". The people of Northern Ireland said, "We will not accept this failure". We heard them, and we responded, using the tool of a recall motion to apply political pressure. It appears to have succeeded, but I say that with a hint of caution, because the debate has rightly thrown up the question of how we got from schemes being unsafe one day to their being safe the next. It is right that points such as that and that provision of nursing care alone is not the only measure of safety required have been raised today.

I welcome the decision to reinstate the schemes with relief rather than celebration. The U-turn came only after the cynical timing of the original announcement was called out, but, by then, the unnecessary distress that it caused had already been inflicted on families. If we are to extract anything constructive from how it has played out, it is this: by standing here now, when people are finally listening to and empathising with the experiences of the families, we can expose and lay bare the fact that, once the Assembly adjourns today, the daily struggle of families with children and young people with complex needs will continue. That also allows us to point out the terrifying reality faced by post-19 families. Summer schemes for post-19 young people do not get cancelled, because there is nothing to cancel. There is nothing, full stop, for so many of the families.

I asked Alma from Caleb's cause to sum up the mood of families after the U-turn. She replied with one word in capital letters: DESPERATION. The decision to remove the service from families who are already desperate may have eroded what little trust remained between SEN families and the Health and Education Ministries. Neither the scale of the harm that that decision would cause to those directly affected nor the chill factor for other families watching it was understood: that is damning.

Both Ministers are embarking on reforms that require the support of the families. Authentic leaders deliver change by bringing people together and face up to the tough calls. More authoritarian or simply ineffective leaders are associated with imposing change and being egotistical and hypersensitive to challenge. The former builds trust; the latter shatters it. This episode, therefore, makes me worry about the difficult reforms that the Ministers are trying to deliver. By failing to grasp the issue earlier and to work together to prevent the fallout that we are experiencing, they have made that challenge even harder.

It is incumbent on me, as the Member winding up on the motion, to summarise the debate. It has been good in some parts and disappointing in others. Many Members noted how essential summer schemes are. The key phrase, "These schemes are a lifeline not a luxury" reflected the words of the motion. The distress of families and what the decision represented were rightly highlighted. Members, including Cheryl Brownlee, highlighted families’ ongoing struggle not just over the summer but year round.

Largely due to the U-turn, many Members broadened the issue in various directions. Many went to the heart of the issue, which is the failure to address nursing provision in special schools. That is an issue that both Ministers have failed to grasp and one that has been raised many times at the Education Committee. My question to the SDLP and others is, "How did you miss it?".

The failure by the Departments of Health and Education to work together and the failing of our children with additional needs have been raised many times; Pat Sheehan made that point. My colleague Nick Mathison was the first to point to the Children’s Services Co-operation Act. We need to see Departments using that legislation and working together meaningfully.

Parents will also want me to reflect their disappointment at the Health Minister's not contributing to the debate. Attempts to displace —.

Mr Nesbitt (The Minister of Health): Will the Member give way?

Mrs Guy: Yes, go for it.

Mr Nesbitt: As you know, Mr Speaker, when there is a debate involving more than one Minister, only one Minister can respond, and that is why I have not spoken in the debate. As I am on my feet, however, I want to offer an unconditional apology to the families concerned for the 24 hours of unnecessary stress and distress.

Some Members: Hear, hear.

Mrs Guy: Thank you, Minister. I genuinely welcome your apology, because the families who are here today deserve that.

Attempts to displace and deflect accountability, however, have been disappointing. The two Ministers are absolutely responsible for the situation, and redirecting to the EA or its board is unhelpful and inaccurate. I agree with Mr Gaston that Ministers are happy to come to the Chamber when they want credit, so the cynical timing of that announcement, as we went into recess, has not gone unnoticed by anyone. As he said, political calculations were made.

The respite issue and the failure of the trusts to deliver for families more generally has been highlighted. Parents are in crisis, and some are going as far as to relinquish their children to the state. It is worth noting that that particular contribution was met with applause from the Public Gallery. The Education Minister outlined months of engagement between Health and the EA, but that does not explain the U-turn within a 24-hour period, nor does it absolve them of the pain that was caused.

The DUP Members raised the issue of the Education budget, but they failed to acknowledge that the Minister of Education waited until well into the financial year before thinking about balancing his budget. He is also supportive of, and is presiding over, a segregated education system that is costing hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

To conclude, I want to sum up by finding some hope for the families concerned. What this debacle has shown is that when we come together and when there is focus, we can deliver. That must be the core takeaway here. Again and again in the Education Committee, we have seen that those two Departments do not collaborate effectively, and that cannot go on. Those families are not extras or others, but integral to our community. We have to stop failing them. There should be no more passing the buck or pointing the finger. The challenge that we all have to meet now is about how we step up and deliver. It is an indictment on all of us that, to date, we have not done that.

Some Members: Hear, hear.

Mr Speaker: There are a lot of children and young people in the Gallery, and I note that their behaviour has been exemplary. Well done to all the young people who have sat through some or all of the debate. I also welcome Deborah Erskine back to the Chamber after her maternity leave. I did not notice you at the start of the sitting, Deborah, so you are very welcome back.

Before I put the Question on amendment No 1, I remind Members that if it is agreed, amendment Nos 2 and 3 will not be taken.