Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator has hit the nail on the head in relation to some of the issues for parents. Even in the coming school year, it is an issue when classes become available in a particular school. I am speaking in general now. Parents have raised with me that sometimes when a place opens up it will be taken by a child already in the school who requires a special class. This is about information sharing, which is exactly what the Senator is highlighting. Part of the solution is resourcing the NCSE, which we are doing through increasing the number and visibility of SENOs on the ground. SENOs have been overstretched. They had too wide a geographical area and were laden down with a lot of administrative work - paperwork. These are issues I am responding to. For this reason, the NCSE is being given administrative positions to alleviate some of the workload from SENOs to allow them to do their work and go into schools, talk to teachers and parents, work on forward planning and help with transition from junior to senior school, for example, or from primary to secondary school. It will be about relationship building with the schools. There is work under way in Limerick on good models in this area. There are areas in Dublin where the schools have access to information on the numbers of children coming in. They would have sight of that information but the NCSE might not. Information sharing is, therefore, important and will be an absolute priority. Come September 2025, I do not want parents to be in the same position as parents are today, not knowing where their child will be in September. That is why the ramping up of resources to the NCSE will be very important in that.