Mr. Andy Pike:

I do not believe there is an embargo but there is a cap. At every budget the Government announces the number of additional SNA posts that will be allocated into the school system but one cannot go beyond that cap. If the budget last year said there would be 1,600 new posts, regardless of the level of need, one cannot go beyond that to go to 1,601. In a way we do get to an embargo situation when they have allocated all of the available posts to mainstream and special schools and there is none left in the kitty. Then it becomes, in effect, a cap or an embargo.