Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

This is about making it as public as possible. This is a new process. It started this year. The deadline this year was 1 February. It was extended slightly because of Storm Éowyn. It means that the NCSE has a clear picture of students who are known to it. I appreciate that there will always be students who do not have their diagnosis or who have not applied even this year. The reason we are setting the date and bringing it forward is that the more the NCSE knows, the greater visibility we have regarding who the children are, what their needs are, where they live, what schools are near to them and what schools we need to sanction. Of course, there will be children outside the timeline. If that happens, we will still encourage parents to make their children known to the NCSE but the timeline has to be set to allow us to plan as effectively as possible. We need to make sure we continue to support children after 1 October, which we will. By bringing the timeline forward to 1 October, I hope we can sanction the vast majority of schools by 31 December, thereby bringing ourselves much more in line with the enrolment timeline for every other child at the beginning of January. I want it to be the case that irrespective of the child and what that child's need is, he or she gets that information around the same time. I hope this change in timeline will help us do that. To be clear, everybody after 1 October will work with those children and their parents.