{"id":435883,"date":"2026-05-06T23:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/435883\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T23:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:00:09","slug":"sfs-janice-boylan-speaks-of-raising-neurodivergent-son-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/435883\/","title":{"rendered":"SF\u2019s Janice Boylan speaks of raising neurodivergent son \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> candidate in Dublin Central<\/a> Janice Boylan has spoken of the experience of raising a nine-year-old neurodivergent son. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have had to fight for him every day for five years to get him his diagnosis,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

She was speaking at a public meeting in Ballybough organised by the campaign to save special needs assistant<\/a> (SNA) places. <\/p>\n

Boylan said she noticed when her son was about three that he showed signs of needing an assessment. She said she had to go through a battle to get a diagnosis of dyspraxia and two diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Independent candidate Gerry Hutch<\/a> said he had not realised until Wednesday that there were kids who did not attend school because they could not get access to SNAs. <\/p>\n

Hutch said he would not allow that situation to happen if it was his kid. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would be down and I would see the minister for the school. I would be down there and I would be kicking ass,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Social Democrats<\/a> candidate Daniel Ennis said that while it took a village to raise a child, it took children with autism to raise awareness of the village. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery child deserves the same opportunities, equal opportunities. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not asking for special treatment. They are just asking for equal treatment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Labour<\/a> candidate Ruth O\u2019Dea said there was a need for a special school in the Dublin 1 area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can see there are not just children who are in the wrong class, who are in the mainstream. There are also people in special classes who should not be there but be in a special school,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Janet Horner of the Green Party<\/a> said from her experience of canvassing there were an \u201cawful lot of children\u201d who were being left behind. \u201cThat is something that is incredibly worrying and scary. We need to fix it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam also addressed the meeting and said he would commit, if elected, to campaign for more resources. He did not sign a pledge, however, saying he had never done so during his career. <\/p>\n

A number of parents and SNAs spoke at the meeting including its co-ordinator, Niamh McDonald. She said that in addition to a lack of SNAs in schools, the current Department of Education circular failed to reflect what assistants do every day, supporting participation in classrooms, communications and offering emotional regulation.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Gerry Hutch\u2019s comments on immigration described as \u2018absolutely racist\u2019 by Dublin Central candidateOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

SNA Jessa Henry said it was a child\u2019s constitutional right to have access to a full and proper education. <\/p>\n

Parent and SNA Rachel Lowry said there were 2,360 families who had no place in education in September, a situation she described as a \u201cdisgrace\u201d. <\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in leader Mary Lou McDonald attended the meeting along with constituency colleagues from Dublin Central, Marie Sherlock of Labour and Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats. Dublin Central byelection candidates who attended included Ray McAdam (Fine Gael); Janice Boylan (Sinn F\u00e9in); Darren Ennis (Social Democrats); Ruth O\u2019Dea (Labour); Gerry Hutch (Independent); and Eoghan \u00d3 Ceannabh\u00e1in (PBP). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sinn F\u00e9in candidate in Dublin Central Janice Boylan has spoken of the experience of raising a nine-year-old neurodivergent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,7038,43],"class_list":["post-435883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}