Mr. Andy Pike:

To answer the Senator’s questio non the provision of information on places, in terms of SEN places, I would have thought the NCSE should be collecting that information and monitoring capacity around the sector, looking ahead, doing the forward planning, working with schools to develop facilities and put resources in where they can see a growing need. The Department is not in a position to do that. From Marlborough Street or Athlone, it will just not be able to reach out and do that. That is one of the things we always thought the NCSE was set up to do.

On the school nursing service, this was part of the original plan for the school inclusion model, that one stream of activity would be the creation of a pool of nursing and other healthcare resources that would be available to schools in mainstream and special classes to assist with meeting complex medical needs. This is a problem that restricts access to schools for many students. Just to think about autistic students, quite a high proportion of them have autism and something else that is an additional care need. Therefore, it is relevant to them. The theory was that the Department of Education and the Department of Health would together be able to provide teams of staff that could go into schools. They would be able to assist with the provision of clinical care and treatment, say, for students with diabetes or epilepsy, students needing percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy, PEG, feeding, and a range of other conditions. They would also assist with the training of staff. As Ms Quinn knows full well, in the special school sector, staff are trained up. However, if a student who is epileptic or has unstable diabetes is to enter a mainstream class, the staff find it very challenging to meet those healthcare needs. That was the theory. We have not seen any progress on delivering that, even within the 75 schools in the catchment area of the school inclusion model. It is something that would solve a lot of problems for autistic students and students with additional care needs in mainstream, were it to happen.

Back to our old friend, July provision, there is a difference in rates between teachers and SNAs. It is not so much of a problem where a school is providing a programme directly because existing staff are paid their existing rate, and there is no argument there. However, where there are no on-site programmes available for a family, there is the option then of home provision. That is where there is a huge difference in rate, depending on if a person has a Teaching Council registration number or not. If not, that person is paid at the SNA substitute rate, which is very low. It barely covers the cost of travel and no travel expenses are provided. People are paid in November and sometimes the payments have been delayed to December. It is not an attractive option. However, there is a real need there. As other members have indicated, the spread of July provision is very patchy. Where there is not a programme in a locality, there is the option, as a parent, to have someone through the home provision scheme. However, it is very difficult to persuade SNAs to participate in that because they know they are paid about 40% of the rate a teacher gets for doing the same job.

I will hand over to Ms Kelly for the other questions, if she has anything to add.