Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection

Special Needs Provision in Second Level Schools: SNPA, NCSE and NAPD

1:30 pm

Mr. Paul Byrne:

I will answer the question about what we do with assistive technology and laptops first. Normally when a student finishes up, some of the parents will come in and ask what the laptop is worth and they are prepared to pay for it. That is what we do. It is no good to any other student in the school. A laptop has a lifespan of three years. When a student has been using it for five years, it is so slow that it is of no use to anybody else. The operating system may have changed twice in that time. The operating system on a laptop can be changed once, but one should forget about trying to put a second one on it.