Mr. Clive Byrne:

Correct. That would makes great sense from my point of view.

Deputy McConalogue wanted more information about the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, and spoke about three assessments in a school of 500 or 600, but that is completely down to capacity. There has been significant investment in the NEPS over the last while in terms of an increase in staffing. Much of the time of the NEPS psychologist in the past was taken up with completing the necessary paperwork to enable resources of scribes and readers to be made available for leaving certificate students. Some of my colleagues made the point that discretion is given to principals in many incidents at second level, whereby they can offer particular resources. The State examinations body will give schools the autonomy that if a student requires a reader or a scribe that such resources can be offered. Often parents look for those resources at junior cycle level because they hope to be able to access those resources at leaving certificate level. There is not always guaranteed because the NEPS will be involved in applications for special resources. Regarding the point Deputy O'Brien made about students not having a certainty that a scribe or a reader would be allocated to a student with the needs he described, it would be most unusual if either the State examinations body or the school would not be in a position to ensure that this happened.

Senator Moran raised a question about the role of a special needs assistant, particularly in regard to refusal to toilet a student. Some rare incidents arise, but on the question of having special needs assistants in the system, that provision has expanded into post-primary level. Our colleagues from the NCSE may know this, but I believe there may be 15,000 or 16,000 individuals in 10,000 wholetime equivalent positions in terms of special needs assistants. Their types of duties and responsibilities are as many and as varied as the individual schools in which they work. I can recall a person applying for an special needs assistant position but not being interested in any toileting duties that might be associated with the student. If a student has such care needs, I would take it as read that the special needs assistant should be required to perform those duties for the student. In view of the particular responsibilities of special needs assistants and there being a renegotiation of their contract, their hours and their availability for work during June and other times of the year, there are particular arrangement in different schools and as long as they are working for the best needs of the school and for the children, I believe it is worth leaving well enough alone, as Senator Craughwell might have implied earlier on the issue of timetabling.

It makes perfect sense that the assistive technology should stay with the student. The pupil passport was an initiative that the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, NAPD, and our primary colleagues Irish Primary Principals Network, IPPN, started in a particular region to ensure that appropriate information was transferred between the primary and post-primary sector. At the time industrial relations issues were strained and the INTO forbade the principals of the primary schools to pass on any of that information. Now that issue has been worked out, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, working with the Department will have primary passports where the appropriate information can be transferred. The NAPD president, Mr. Paul Byrne referred to the continuous professional development of principals and he was generous in his comments. We do our best to provide continuous professional development for our members in the areas of special education needs because our policy is that all schools should be inclusive and welcoming.

Part of the reason we welcomed the Stack report was the concept of a baseline allocating to all schools. If all schools have a baseline allocation from the NCSE, then no school can have the soft barriers that are often spoken about by saying that one would be better able to have one's son or daughter catered for if one were to move to a school down the road. Certainly working with the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, and the research conferences and research papers they provide, we find constant supports and resources are made available. The difficulty, as my colleague said, is in regard to the current climate in school, where pressures on principals and deputy principals and everybody else in the teaching profession as a result of moratorium on posts, cutbacks and changes to pupil teacher ratios is affecting what is happening in school. There is no doubt that in terms of a policy position, the most serious policy recommendation that could come would be that somebody should be allocated a role as a senior SEN co-ordinator within a school to enable appropriate services to be put in place to meet the needs of the students in the school in the context in which they find themselves