Mr. John Kearney:

I will respond to Deputy Tully's other two queries, in particular on offering assurances to school principals. The NCSE has been consistently engaging with school principals on how the review model and the process will work best for their school and community. We have also been engaging with other stakeholders on how the review process will best address some of the concerns and fears that schools and communities have that have been relayed directly to them by schoolteachers and parents.

On the second query about the value for money or quality assurance of the money invested, as such, which is 26% of overall Exchequer funding from the Department's budget, it is very much envisaged in the policy advice that there would be a continuous review of student places. We see that very much in terms of bringing the policy advice to constructive implementation. That will offer the mechanism of providing a continual review and appraisal of whether the placements are a good investment in terms of the learning outcomes and that there is a formal evaluation and oversight of that.

That will also complement the ongoing work that our colleagues in the inspectorate do in school inspections. There is a quality assurance framework being established within schools. There is a level of appraisal conducted of the returns on the significant investment made but more can be done on that footing. The policy advice makes specific recommendations in regard to that.

The school inclusion model has been in its pilot phase for four to five years at this stage. We have conducted internal evaluations of it. It has delivered significant returns to the school and communities with which we have been very privileged and proud to work and engage. We have established tremendous working relationships with the CDNTs in those regions. There are very clear boundaries and roles and responsibilities identified with colleagues in NEPS in terms of rolling out that particular programme.

We have received tremendous support from the Department of Education in making it a mainstream permanent project. Given the level of interest from the type of professional role that therapists have in working to enhance teacher capacity within individual schools and communities, we are quite confident that a recruitment campaign would be successful once we move from the pilot into the more permanent phase of the programme.