Secondary schools do not have the resources to teach the vast majority of special-needs students or to implement the Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2003, say school principals.
At their annual conference in Galway, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) demanded that the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Dempsey, intervene to redress the situation as a matter of urgency.
Principals are also calling on management bodies to draw up admission policies that give them the right to postpone the entry of special-needs students into schools unless resources are made available first.
Meanwhile the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) has told the Minister that the workload being placed on principals by the new legislation will not be accepted. The legislation calls for principals to draw up individual plans for students, as well as giving them responsibility for implementing those plans. The ASTI is arguing that principals should be responsible for implementation only.
Secondary schools still do not have the resources they need to teach incoming students with special needs, the NAPD conference heard. A student entering first year may not get the required resources until the following year.
Mr Derek West, principal of Newpark School in Blackrock, Co Dublin, and the incoming president of the NAPD, said his school now had a growing number of students with special needs year on year and yet no additional resources had been allocated over the past four years.
It had been confirmed to him by a senior official in the Department that the system was "in a state of chaos", he said.
"There is a groundswell of militancy about the premature imposition of rules such as the Disabilities Bill, that cannot be followed through," he added.
"It is a scandal," said the outgoing president of the association, Mr Michael McCann.
"It would be little short of cynical on the part of the Government to enact the Education for Persons with Disabilities Bill when schools quite obviously do not have the resources to implement it," he said.
During debates on two emergency motions on the issue, several delegates expressed the view that the Government's decision to legislate for students with special needs without providing the resources could result in a tribunal 20 years from now.
Mr Jim Ryan, of Dungarvan CBS, said that at a time when people were prepared to go to jail on the issue of bin charges, principals should be marching on Leinster House concerning the "national scandal" of lack of provision for students with special needs.
"This is a philistine Government that loves playing lip service to education, but they could not care less," he said.