Ms Martina Mannion:

The Cathaoirleach has identified there the way that the allocations process happened prior to 2017. Prior to 2017, every child who needed any resource, be it within mainstream or elsewhere, needed a diagnosis and a psychological assessment and then the special educational needs organiser, SENO, would allocate, let us say, five hours for childhood autism. At that time, that was the model whereby one needed an assessment in order to trigger the resource. In 2017, we moved away from that model. We went to the special education teacher allocation model. That, effectively, is a model that identifies broadly the level of need in the school system and ensures that there are enough special education teachers in the mainstream classes in each of the schools around the country to meet that need. The role of the SENO then changed. They were then dealing, I suppose, with more complex cases - the classes for special classes - and also they were doing something which was part of the special education exceptional review process for both the special education teachers and the special needs assistants, SNAs.

I might ask my colleague, Mr. Frank Hanlon, to talk about that because one of the things we are trying to do with the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, is to streamline the processes. We are conscious of the workload on teachers so we are trying to streamline the processes so that the paperwork, as the Cathaoirleach has described it, that has to come back into the NCSE or into the Department can be made easier. In ensuring that the SENOs are out there and are no longer having to allocate hours based on a diagnosis, it frees them up to spend more time with parents and more time working in the schools to support the individual children based on their needs.

I might touch on the second issue that the Cathaoirleach talked about there, the huge success of a school with two autism spectrum disorder, ASD, classes, and maybe it is not having a third. In the Cathaoirleach's own constituency, there has been a huge increase in the provision. Mr. Martin McLoughlin can talk about it. We are trying to avoid a situation where one school or two schools in an area become the default school or schools for all children with special educational needs. If a school has two autism classes, it would be our preference that another school in the area would also open autism classes so that it does not become anti-inclusionary. The services for special educational needs for children who need special class provision should be spread across the county. The disadvantage of having them all in one area is that the children are then travelling long distances.

I might in the first instance ask Mr. Hanlon to give the committee a short update on how we are trying to streamline that process, and then Mr. McLoughlin to tell the committee a little about what we are doing, particularly in relation to ensuring that bigger spread of provision in our forward planning piece.