Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Ms O'Sullivan put her finger on it when she said the role of SNA is a profession. In fact, it is not; it is a job that is done under a scheme. How can people plan for a mortgage, starting a family, developing career pathways or anything like that when they are on a scheme rather than being enrolled in a profession?

I spent 15 years in a classroom and for approximately ten of those years, I had an SNA in the room with me. I will be killed stone dead if I do not remember all their names. There was Vicky, Kathleen, Sandra, Fionnuala, Ciara and Eileen but I am sure I have forgotten somebody. The very first year I taught after becoming qualified, I had an SNA in my classroom, but I was given no direction or education in terms of how to work with that person. As far as I was concerned, I had another educator inside the classroom but there was no guidance given to me on how I was to structure that person's working day. How the role of the SNA works in practice is very dependent on the relationship with the teacher. I will not ask the SNA witnesses to comment but I am sure they found their working situation changed from year to year as the teacher changed. Teachers are quite constrained in how they can make use of the talent of the person who is in the room with them and what they can ask that individual to do within the guidelines of the description of the job. If we really allowed SNAs to fulfil their role as professionals within the education system, we could derive a lot more benefit from the role.

I have a couple of specific questions for Mr. Pike on some of the statistics he gave us regarding the level of qualifications in the SNA workforce. He set out all the percentages but I wonder if we changed that to look at the percentage with an education qualification or something that is specific to what is happening in the classroom, would we see a significant change.

I was a little taken aback by what Mr. Pike said. A question I was going to put to him was where he thinks the UCD course would land in terms of accreditation. He said it was level 7 or level 8, which would be to a degree standard. Is he happy to stand over that in terms of the input? It is essential that we provide an accreditation but we have to make sure it is at the right level.

On a more general question, how does one choose to be an SNA at this point? What is the career pathway for new entrants? As a final comment, I am struck that all of the names I listed out are of women. I wonder what the percentage is across the workforce. The witnesses might be able to tell me what the gender breakdown is in total and in terms of new intake. I have a suspicion that if it was a predominantly male profession, the accreditation scenario would have been sorted out before now.