Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I want to thank the Minister of State for meeting with the families who were impacted by the valproate scandal last year. Their educational needs are enormously important. They have made the Minister of State aware of the shortcomings of the stakeholders group and what needs to be done there. It is my hope that we will have an agreement on the terms of reference for the inquiry this week. Those children have been failed over and over again.

I want to raise the issue of accreditation with the Minister of State. I would argue that no review is needed. The fact that training is not accredited should be addressed immediately. At the time, the decision to deliver the course through UCD struck me as an unusual approach. I say this because to my understanding UCD as a university is not able to offer courses that will potentially lead to accreditation below a level 8. UCD no doubt has the expertise to deliver the high-quality training programmes. It had to deliver a lot in its development of the content of the course. Yet, the delivery is a separate question.

I raised this issue with the Minister of State in the past, after the first intake of the SNAs onto the training course. She informed me that a public procurement competition was held and that accreditation by the national framework of qualifications, NFQ, was not a requirement. This strikes me as a substantial oversight. This is despite the fact that one of the key recommendations in the 2018 review by the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, was for the training programme to be introduced at a minimum of a level 5 on the national framework of qualifications. The Government even addressed the issue of formal qualifications in the terms of reference of the review. What was the rationale for not including accreditation in the procurement process that was won by UCD? Is UCD able to offer accreditation at level 5 or level 6 that would be appropriate? Does the Minister of State believe that this can be worked around, or is it necessary to deliver the training of SNAs in a different setting? Has that been addressed? Is the current agreement with UCD a barrier to providing the training where the accreditation could be offered? There will be 1,000 SNAs going through the ten-month programme in September. We need to look at all options that are available in order to attach an accreditation to the course before then. Can the Minister of State let us know what exactly is being done?