Ms Charlotte Cahill:

That has come up quite a lot at the committee I am on. An example is Libermann special school in Templeogue. It hopes to have two new special classes opening in September of this year, and because of those two new classes its SNA allocation has automatically been put under review. This puts another burden on the parents because it means the school needs accurate reports to support the fight to keep SNA provision in the classroom at a one-to-one level for the children. I hope my daughter will be attending the school. I had to go back to the CDNT and chase up the psychologist who produced my daughter’s report. She was on maternity leave. I had to go back to the manager and try to get somebody to adjust my daughter’s report to make it as clear as day to the NCSE that she needed one-to-one support so the school would not lose any SNAs. This issue comes up constantly. We raised it with the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, at the last committee meeting and spoke in depth to Mr. John Kearney. He told us that no SNAs would be taken from the school, which we have seen is untrue.