Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a few brief questions for the Minister and Minister of State. One for the Minister relates, perhaps tangentially, to the subject of health and obesity. Most secondary schools will now have a hall, but a fair proportion still do not. As matters stand with capital funding, unless there is a new build or refurbishment that is effectively tantamount to a new build, schools are not getting approval for halls. We must address this in the capital programmes. In accordance with the Healthy Ireland targets and the desire to offer physical education, PE, to every school as a leaving certificate subject, schools need halls. I can think of examples of school in my area, and elsewhere, that do not have school halls and have no prospect of getting them.

Turning to the Minister of State, one of the elements of the budget which I welcomed was the numbers in respect of SNAs. The last two budgets have shown that having targets in place does not necessarily mean they are realised. We do not seem to be able to recruit the same number of staff as the funds have been allocated for. It is not just a budgetary issue. Part of it comes back to the recognition of qualifications aspect. I disagree with the response that this issue will be part of the public sector pay talks. A review should be undertaken before that happens. It is putting the cart before the horse otherwise. We cannot decide what people should be paid unless we have a sense of exactly what their responsibilities are going to be. My request to the Minister of State, and I do not think this is unreasonable, is that she establish an expert group to look at the qualifications and criteria for SNAs. The order in which this should proceed is to undertake an expert review before moving to pay negotiations. We must first know what we are asking SNAs to do and what qualifications they should be expected to have to qualify.