Mr. Eamon Stack:

I accept that. I have not addressed it but I will now in so far as I can. The pilot is being operated by the Department of Education and Skills, not by the NCSE so the NCSE has stayed away from it apart from giving the co-operation that has been requested of it. We are not operating the pilot. As with everyone else, I am waiting with interest for the result of the pilot and to find out where we go from there. It is better to have information before one makes a decision than after making it. The Deputy is right to say that resources were taken off the agenda for the pilot so that they would not upset the apple cart. That is acceptable because the purpose of the pilot was to establish the operational aspect of it. The focus of the new model is to ensure that students who need resources have them. If a school has the students, it should have the resources; if it does not have the students, why would it keep the resources? That is a question and not a point of view.

In the new model, the resources are designed to be where they are needed. We have said very clearly that in the new model, assessment should not be required to receive resources. Every school should have a baseline of resources and there is a baseline in place. Whether that is too big or too small will become apparent with experience. Hopefully, the resource problem will work itself out but there could be schools that will lose resources. As chairperson, I am concerned that a school with students with special educational needs will lose resources. That is the real question. The question is as important as the answer. That is why it is resource-free, it was not designed to take resources away from schools that genuinely need them.