Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I am very sorry, Ms Walsh. It is a very important answer. If there is a way afterwards for both the Department and NCSE to tidy up some of this in terms of a collective response, it would be really appreciated. I apologise, but such is the job, I have to keep the meeting moving.

My speaking slot is next and I apologise to members because they have heard me make this point like a parrot several times over. I want to look at the whole area of SENOs and professional competency. There are many fine SENOs supporting schools in very good ways but it is not always the case. Some schools, parents and children would see SENOs as putting certain barriers in front of them when they are trying to access what they need. That is a feeling, whether it is right or wrong we will discuss in a moment.

To my knowledge - and the correspondence only came in this morning, we would have loved it 11 weeks ago - to become a SENO, one must have a QQI level 8 in the health sciences, education field or social sciences. They are professionally tasked with looking at educational psychologists' reports, which are clinical reports with clinical recommendations that are very clear. I have many friends who have studied health sciences and I am teacher by profession. I never got any training in Mary Immaculate College - I still use my Mary I biro - in educational psychology on how to analyse and dismiss reports. However, SENOs are somehow empowered to do this. I would love to know what training does the Department give people when they go through the interview and are taken on as part of their staff? What training are they given to become educational psychologists or at least to interpret reports from educational psychologists?

I have repeatedly made the point that I am a teacher, I am not a dentist or a surgeon. I would not go down the street to a hospital and stand at the door and tell the surgeons they got something wrong because I know better. That is what happens with reports from educational psychologists. There could be recommendations there for SNA reports or assistive technology yet we have youngsters who cannot get laptops or are told that they do not need SNAs after being observed by a SENO for a 10 or 15 minute period. This observation supersedes a report from an educational psychologist. How is that allowed to happen? I have seen many parents left brow beaten after walking out of meetings. They do not know how to fight back against these barriers. On one occasion, I saw a father, who was a barrister, make the point that there is a legal principal here. Someone should only be able to rubbish, counteract or dismiss someone's report if they are equally or more qualified. After having SENOs around for almost 20 years, how is it that they can go in interpret a report and dismiss it?