Mr. Pat Healy:

One of the posts we will put in place is specifically focused on the development of outcomes, which is very important and will be developmental. There is work ongoing examining how many posts we will require into the future and a workforce planning piece has been done. The additional resource we have this year is €4 million and we cannot move beyond that. Our maximum capacity is to implement the 80 posts. Including the posts that were approved last year and this year, it will be a 20% increase in the north Dublin area, which is significant. I take the point made by education colleagues that we are not in the same position as them in that we do not have to get approval to proceed every time a special class is developed. This is not how the funding of the health service has progressed.

I have outlined how funding is being allocated this year.

The areas where we target funding take into account significant pressures and the capacity to roll out the model in the current year because we need to do it appropriately. The model does not envisage placing caps on schools. With regard to making a distinction between mainstream and special schools, the purpose of the new model we are rolling out is to remove all of this inconsistency.