Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are a number of issues I wish to raise. The NCSE comes from the policy section in the Department. Over the past number of years, there had been great engagement with SENOs on making decisions in the principal's office after being out in the school. That power seems to have waned. I am aware that SENOs are under tremendous pressure and are covering a great deal but there are now more layers of bureaucracy, for want of a better term, and bigger challenges for people to get decisions made at the school gate or when a visit is made to the school. Is the Department hearing that with regard to empowering the SENOs to make decisions? The vast majority of SENOs would have come through the education system in any event and would know the challenges from the classroom or indeed from a parent's point of view. We should be empowering them.

I came across a situation recently involving a school in a rural setting that successfully set up two ASD units. Because of the lack of facilities in the area, the school now has enough demand for a third classroom. That third classroom has been turned down on a number of occasions even though the demand is there. That means we have children travelling 40 minutes or more to get to an ASD unit. I am trying to understand this. If there are two ASD units in a school and the school is looking for a third one, the school obviously has the expertise. Parents would not be bringing their children to the school unless it was seen to be doing its job well, so why is there a difficulty with the third unit?

Six or seven years ago, SENOs seemed to have been empowered to make decisions almost on the day. Now they are reporting over and back, and there are more engagements and challenges for them to contend with when they are seeking to make a decision on an issue. This leads to frustration from the point of view of schools and parents.

Some of the members raised issues about people with disabilities or, indeed, their families on boards of management. That is something that should be looked at fundamentally from a policy point of view. We have the boards of management set up where there are community representatives, patrons' representatives and parents' representatives. In schools where they are providing additional places, maybe it is something that should be looked at. I am not sure whether that has to be done by statutory instrument or by primary legislation, but it is something that needs to be looked at. The Department might respond to those.