ABSTRACT
Ireland, like many of its European counterparts, operates a dual track system of provision in inclusive and special education. Emerging from a medical model of disability Ireland’s educational system has never been re-imagined enough to include children with special educational needs (SEN) into general mainstream schools. Consequently, while those who occupied the margins of the education system have been integrated into the mainstream, there have been many examples of maintaining practices that exclude them, resulting in internal exclusion, as against the external exclusion they suffered in earlier times. Thus, children with SEN continue to occupy a position on the margins of public education. This chapter calls for public education to treat the definition of inclusive education as the process of bolstering both specialist and mainstream provision if children with SEN are to be valued as being part of the public.
