Ms Martina Mannion:

The Deputy covered three issues. I will deal with the second one first. The Deputy will appreciate that when an individual issue is raised concerning a specific school and building project, we will come back to her directly. Regarding the budget and funding for special education, we outlined in our opening statement that in September 2021, we will see an additional 1,000 SNAs and an additional 400 extra special education teachers on top of what was a significant increase over previous years. We are talking about a 50% increase in special education allocation since 2011. This is a really significant increase and shows the Minister and Department's commitment to special education where more than 20% of our budget is now being spent on children with special educational needs.

The Deputy mentioned the impact of the return to school and Covid. The Department is working on this and all the measures we have put in place since March 2020 have been to put in place resources and supports to support children who are out of school as a result of school closures in particular acknowledgement that children with special educational needs would find it hardest to engage with remote learning. It is for this reason that they were prioritised for the return to school and that all the supports and resources we have put in place, including additional guidance, were there to ensure that when they were being taught remotely, they were able to access this to the best possible degree, acknowledging that nothing replaces the child returning to the school itself.

The first issue raised by the Deputy related to the recruitment of psychologists. I will hand over to Ms Tansey but I reiterate that all public service appointments are recruited in line with public service requirements. In an organisation like NEPS, which has over 200 staff, there will be ongoing recruitment of psychologists and filling of posts on an ongoing basis, so this is not a static figure. As people retire and move on, there is continuous movement in and out of the service. The key message given by Ms Tansey is that a NEPS psychological service is available to every primary and post-primary school in the country. Ms Tansey might be able to provide more information on that.