The Northern Ireland Assembly was recalled in an emergency sitting on Tuesday to debate the cancellation and rapid reinstatement of summer schemes in special schools, with Members across the chamber demanding full accountability from the Minister of Education, Paul Givan, and the Minister of Health, Mike Nesbitt, over what many described as a shambolic and avoidable crisis. The Education Authority had announced the cancellation of 2026 summer schemes citing concerns over healthcare provision for participating children, only to reverse the decision within 24 hours following intense public pressure and a recall petition initiated by the Alliance Party. Families of children with special educational needs, many of whom attended the debate from the Public Gallery, had been left in a state of distress and uncertainty during the Easter recess period.

Proposing the motion, Alliance MLA Andrew Tennyson described the episode as "an appalling dereliction of duty" and questioned why a resolution was found within hours on a Friday when months of inaction had preceded the crisis. He said: "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." Tennyson also noted that the announcement had emerged just as the Assembly entered recess, which he characterised as "a clear attempt to avoid scrutiny or accountability in the Chamber." He demanded a fulsome apology from both Ministers and called for full transparency about how the decision was made.

Sinn Fein's Cathy Mason moved Amendment No 1, which accepted the first half of the motion's findings but removed the direct condemnation of both Ministers, instead calling on them to provide a full explanation and work collaboratively going forward. Mason was sharply critical of the Education Minister, saying he had known about the nursing provision crisis for months and had failed to act. She asked the Minister directly: "Will all summer schemes in special schools definitely go ahead this year?" She also raised the case of a family who had cancelled their only annual holiday after the initial cancellation announcement, asking the Minister whether he would still be taking his own summer break.

The DUP's Colin McGrath moved Amendment No 2, which welcomed the Ministers' intervention in resolving the issue but also drew attention to the fact that the Education Minister's Executive paper on capital funding for special educational needs had not been placed on the Executive agenda despite being tabled six months earlier. McGrath argued that the issue required a response from the Finance Minister in terms of adequate resourcing, and called on the Finance Minister to ensure sufficient funding for both the Department of Health and the Department of Education to support children with special needs year-round.

SDLP MLA Colin McGrath moved Amendment No 3, which sought to insert a note that all Executive parties have representatives on the Education Authority board and were made aware of risks to summer schemes on previous occasions. He argued that the failure was one of collective responsibility across the Executive, saying: "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." He questioned why a solution had been found on Friday but not in the months prior, and described the situation as "a dysfunctional Executive presiding over dysfunction."

Alliance MLA Nick Mathison, Chair of the Education Committee, said the concerns about nursing provision in special schools had been documented for years, noting that he had personally facilitated meetings between principals and health trusts as far back as 2024. He questioned why both Ministers had stood by and allowed the cancellation to proceed, and asked the Education Minister directly to explain why the situation was allowed to reach the point of cancellation when a resolution was seemingly achievable in a matter of hours. He said: "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?"

DUP MLA Cheryl Brownlee, who has a child with special educational needs, gave an emotional account of what life is like for SEN families, describing summer holidays as a period of intense pressure rather than joy for many. She said: "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." She welcomed the reinstatement of the schemes but warned that the issue was "just the tip of the iceberg" and called for a coordinated approach across Health, Education and Finance.

Alliance MLA Nuala McAllister focused attention on the Department of Health's responsibilities, criticising the lack of progress on respite services following commitments made after the 'Spotlight' documentary 'I Am Not Okay' aired 18 months earlier. She said that a health trust had sent families payments of between 200 and 500 pounds because it could not provide approved respite care, and questioned how parents already coping on a one-to-one basis at home were expected to arrange alternatives privately. She said the fact that families were relying on education settings for respite was "a dire indictment of the actions of the Department of Health."

People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll criticised both Ministers and said the schemes had "simply not been a priority until the parents and the public made themselves impossible to ignore." He also raised concerns about children with additional needs in mainstream schools who have no access to summer schemes, and called on the Executive to reverse the loss of Youth Service funding and address a range of other failures affecting people with disabilities. TUV MLA Timothy Gaston questioned whether the Ministers had been unaware of the situation or simply did not care, saying the answer to why the Assembly had been recalled lay in one of those two possibilities.

Responding to the debate, Education Minister Paul Givan said he welcomed the opportunity to address the issues but accused Sinn Fein Members of exploiting the debate for party political purposes and said he would not take interventions from them. He said supporting children with special educational needs was an Executive priority but required the input and support of the whole Executive, not just his Department. He acknowledged that the special school landscape had changed significantly in recent years, with rising pupil numbers and increasing complexity of need, and said he had engaged constructively with the Health Minister and school principals as recently as February on nursing provision concerns. He said the Education Authority could not safely provide summer schemes on its own and needed the support and investment of other Departments.