Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy personally engaged with me on the challenges for parents and I appreciate that. We are very conscious of the pressures. The overall aim is to lift that burden from parents. We have concluded the issue there is we did not have a sufficiency of SENOs on the ground and that makes it really difficult for parents and guardians. As such, an additional €30 million has now been provided to the NCSE. We had over 1,000 applications, which was really positive. There will be 120 of those positions available and there is also restructuring, as I said, across centres. We have 21 centres where there were previously ten. All of that will make it so much easier for parents to know who to go to, where to go and that stress will be lifted from that. We will do more and more in that space because I would never want it to be the case that parents would have that stress. I appreciate the Deputy has highlighted it with me before.

Ms Mannion might come in on the data and where all the information comes from.