Ms Martina Mannion:

I thank the Deputy. Again, I am starting at the bottom and working my way up. I am very conscious the Deputy asked us the question when we were here before about the titles of schools. Language and having the right language is very important. One of the questions that was in the EPSEN Act is going forward, how do we want to support people in using the language they want? That is part of the big engagement and consultation process we are going through with people. In engaging with special schools, they are rightly very proud of the work they do and in many cases would not want the name "special school" removed from them. Equally, we want to move into the future in acknowledging that all our children with special educational needs must be supported in the best and most inclusive environment. In that regard, things we are doing in our forward planning piece include a campus solution where we colocate special and mainstream schools, so over time people come in the same gate and then go to the setting that most meets their needs. That goes back to earlier questions about what an inclusive vision is, and it is things like that. I give reassurance that in the EPSEN review we are looking at all those things around language and how describe what we do. We want to ensure it is appropriate and the people who are impacted by it have a very big say in that. We are talking about new legislation and all the learnings from it. When we come back to the committee, I am absolutely sure there will be learnings about how we identify our schools.

The Deputy raised a very important issue with respect to Irish language provision. We are very conscious of ensuring children with additional needs can access education through Irish. We have special classes in our Gaeilscoileanna. We also know there are children who have secured exemptions on foot of the fact they have special educational needs or are in special schools or classes. We are, in the first instance, trying to ensure we have enough provision across our Gaeilscoileanna and our English-medium schools. We are working with our colleagues in the curriculum unit and those in the Irish language policy section, who are dealing with the documentation the Deputy referred to. We are familiar with it. We have moved from a place where we were just focused on getting enough provision open. As Mr. Doody and other colleagues have said, we have moved beyond that now to the quality of it, and the Irish-language medium comes into that space.

I will ask Mr. McLoughlin to talk a little about the provision in Galway and how we can support the child the Deputy referenced.

On the educational psychologists, it is an ongoing recruitment process. It is being operated via the public appointments system. All these people obviously have to be Garda vetted, so they come through in individual numbers. My understanding is small numbers came through initially; certainly it was under ten. I have not got the exact figure, but we will come back to the Deputy on how many people are currently there. On the first issue about same, it is not a budgetary issue, in that we have the funding from within our allocation to support the roll-out. The issue is the model of provision to date has been based in one area because that is where the SIM pilot started. Our proposal is that those therapists be embedded across the NCSE staff. When we move from a model as originally envisaged that got approval from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to a different model we still have to engage with that Department, even if there is no budgetary impact. That is where are at the minute.

Mr. McLoughlin might talk a bit about the provision we are making in Galway and what we propose to do there.