Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have put in place a junior certificate process. It is public policy and is being rolled out in all schools. One of the unions has decided not to engage, which is very unfortunate. We are continuing to engage with that union.

In respect of the Deputy's specific concern, we have invited the ASTI to consider lifting its blocking of the English element in particular so that students coming to their exams in June will not be handicapped. The terms of assessment of this curriculum were set many years ago. It was agreed with all the unions at that time and it is established public policy.

On the issue of tax settlements, there was one on travel and subsistence payments. No penalties were involved; there was tax and interest. An exemption was granted for these payments for 2016 in the Finance Act so the practice is one that is provided for in the Finance Act. The remainder was in respect of home tutors who were paid directly through our payroll. No penalties were effected. All home tutors are now paid on our payroll and are fully tax compliant.

The €100 million in respect of capital was allocated. The smoothing refers to the way in which the EU rules treat capital so that if one spends €100 million in new capital, the financial space absorbed by it is only €25 million in year one. It is an incentive within the EU rules for capital spending. A provision was made to take advantage of that which allowed €100 million extra for us. I understand it will have to be provided and we are in discussion with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. It can be met by savings elsewhere in capital budgets.

I will get the committee a note on the legal fees; I do not have it to hand. On Deputy Catherine Martin's point about special needs assistants, the provision of both special needs assistants and resource teachers is somewhat different in that it depends on the profile of the intake of pupils in a particular year. The assessment is done through the local special education needs organiser, SENO, working with the school. Some of those allocations are based on very specific assessments submitted for individual pupils against which a provision of either an SNA or resource teaching hours has to be made. There cannot be an accurate prediction of that ahead of the children presenting, having the assessments and the assessments being presented. Some of them will be appealed and will go back to the National Council for Special Education. The fact that there are 860 extra SNAs provided this year does not reflect some major breakdown in estimation or failure to meet demand. This is a demand-led scheme where provision follows the demand. It is much like some of the demand-led schemes that exist in other Departments. That creates an issue in terms of budgeting because it does not come in automatically as a demographic in our scenario of no policy change. We have to assess the need in the course of the year and make provision for it. We anticipate what it will be and make a provision for it but the actual accurate provision is only made ahead of the September allocation.

I take the Deputy's point about timelines for schools to know what their allocation will be. There is now work on a revised programme for allocating resource teachers, which seeks to respond to the work done by Eamon Stack of the NCSE and have a model that is not so dependent on assessments being submitted. The committee probably knows that in disadvantaged areas kids might find it much harder to get assessment than in other areas. The system tends to favour those who have the psychological assessment submitted. The move to the new model would have less reliance on those types of assessments and would have a more whole-school approach but would also guarantee that no child loses out. It has been piloted in 47 areas. As the Deputy rightly said, what is under consideration now is the possibility of mainstreaming that which will be more costly in the initial years but will provide a better model for it.

I understand the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, does not deal with every child's demand. The process in NEPS is to seek to support schools and it will only come in for individual children where a particular requirement has been identified. It seeks to allocate protected time to the DEIS schools where it anticipates the need is greatest. It is widely recognised that it is an area in which we need to invest more. There is commitment in the programme for Government to increase the provision by 25%. The same can be said of counselling where we have a commitment to increase provision. There is an allocation this year and there is also a commitment in the confidence and supply agreement to increase counselling. This is an area that it has been recognised has had an adverse impact and we are looking to work towards its restoration over the coming years.