Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe announced in February that 128 special classes with 534 pupils with mild general learning disability (MGLD) — significantly below average IQ for their age — would no longer be staffed from next September. The reason was that none of these classes had the nine pupils required for the school to maintain it and the minister insisted the best way for these children to progress was through integration with other pupils.

However, the author of a book outlining research over 18 years on MGLD children has claimed that this policy is only suitable in certain circumstances.

"It is being well progressed in some countries, particularly Sweden and other parts of Scandinavia, where their mainstream classes have far fewer pupils, and they have more supports for children with special needs," said Dr Paul Stevens, who is principal of Scoil an Chroí Ró Naofa in Castletownbere, Co Cork.

He is co-author of Inclusion or Illusion, a book published this week detailing the findings of research about special needs education among 900 teachers between 1989 and 2007.

According to a 2003 Department of Education survey, more than 4,500 pupils had MGLD, and children in this category can also have associated issues like speech, emotional and behavioural difficulties.

The work, carried out by Dr Stevens and Professor Mona O'Moore of Trinity College Dublin, shows that the level of integration of children in special classes with mainstream pupils had fallen slightly during the study period. However, he said there needs to be far greater supports in place before the minister's ambition of greater integration can be achieved.

"There needs to be more access to educational psychological services, which are absent from hundreds of schools, as well as greater levels of speech or occupational therapy," he said.

"Most mainstream teachers have little or no special education training and it wouldn't be fair to children to put them into classes of 30 others and expect them to have their special needs met," Dr Stevens said. The minister has insisted teachers will be able to provide for the needs of MGLD children in mainstream classes.

But Dr Stevens said these pupils will now have to receive help from resource teachers, which will mean reduced help for other children with less severe difficulties who are currently being helped by these staff.

The families and teachers of dozens of MGLD pupils in Dublin schools, who are due to lose their special classes, protested outside the Dáil on Tuesday. One mother told the Irish Examiner her only plea to Mr O'Keeffe was to come and sit for 20 minutes in her daughter's special class and then explain how he expects her to cope in a mainstream class of girls who are a couple of years ahead in reading and writing terms.