Ms Lorraine Dempsey:

On the domiciliary care allowance, I am one of the members on the Department's steering group, and we will make our report to the Minister towards the end of December. Parents are directly involved in the steering group, and work is ongoing.

It is important to discuss briefly this core assessment. We are aware there are cross-departmental groups in operation across education, health and welfare, but we would particularly make a call for this group to examine one core pathway not only for disability services and assessments under the assessment of needs but for everything to ensure we do not have to go from pillar to post to get all the resources our children need. That is a model we would like to be explored by the cross-departmental group, be it the existing one or a new one set up for that purpose.

There is not a specific budget for the needs of school leavers. What we have is a random response year on year. We have budget constraints. We cannot meet the needs of all the school leavers who in general would have anywhere from mild to severe learning and physical disabilities. Even by September there were still approximately 100 of the 700 school leavers who had no placement. These are generally people who have older parents who have their own needs to be met. It is not acceptable that every year we face this problem from May onwards and that there is not a fixed budget to address the school leavers issue.

In terms of the relationship with the NCSE, we have had several meetings with it in recent years. We go to it with questions, it answers our questions, we make proposals and we discuss them. We appreciate that it encourages our input in that respect.

Regarding special educational needs officers, their quality will differ depending on the person and their background. SENOs come from various backgrounds and there are no specific qualifications. That is an area that must be examined because the evidence is that it may affect decisions across different areas.

On the equipment issue, we have cited a case from the Ombudsman in regard to a child. I know that family personally and the ins and outs of that case. Equipment supplied through the Department in terms of educational support equipment, such as laptops, computers and that type of specialist equipment, is diagnosis-based. If someone does not meet the criteria in terms of diagnosis, he or she does not get the equipment. The Ombudsman was clear in her determination that this must be examined. That brings us back to using a needs-based system rather than a diagnosis-based system.

There is an issue in rural Ireland because resources are stretched, services and schools are further apart, there are fewer special units and special schools and, therefore, distances travelled by children will be longer. In some areas there could be a family which has one child with special needs and two other children in national school. That presents a logistical problem for the parent who is not granted special transport and who may have two children who only have to travel five minutes to their local school and another child who has a 60 km trip to their school. We are using a specific case in this instance rather than making up figures. That is something we raised in the meeting with the special education unit and the transport section of the Department.

On the independent appeals process, we have an independent appeals process for social welfare entitlements. We have an appeals process in the HSE but we do not have an appeals process for special education. The reason we have sought an independent appeals board consistently over the past two years is because when the first tranche of SNA reductions, which were severe, came in over two years ago as a result of the value for money review ongoing since 2009. Principals, who were essentially the gatekeepers for a parent trying to appeal for further assistance for their child, were afraid to draw attention to their remaining resources and therefore did not want to be reviewed. In some cases, they did not ask the senior SENO to re-examine the case because they did not want them back in their school for fear of losing further resources. That was the period from 2009 to 2010 when there were major reductions in the number of SNAs. While there might have been merit in some cases, the schools operated for years on the basis that they had a certain number of support staff and they were taken away in the one move. There were fears about that. People have adapted to the current level of SNAs but, as we have identified in our submission, there are instances where shared access is not practical.

Parents should have the right to appeal a decision, especially regarding shared access for their children, because from school to school it is principals who are now deciding, on the basis of a whole-school resource allocation, who gets what.

In some cases SENOs made an application of 2.5 full-time SNA posts to schools on the basis of the mix of children but those posts were allocated because one child might require a full-time post even though the SNA specifically allocated for the child's requirements is shared. The hours allocated to children in a particular school depend on the experience of principals. In some cases children did not have sight nor sound of an SNA and when the parent complained to the SENO about why their child was not getting more support they were informed that on the basis of their child's needs a half-time or whole-time post was allocated but the principal was using them as a whole-school resource to meet the needs of children who did not qualify for an SNA under the core criteria. The reality for the principal is that they had far more students who needed a level of support that could not be met through the SNA scheme.