Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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I welcome the Minister of State. I congratulate Fórsa and the individual SNAs who have brought this conversation to the heart of the Houses of the Oireachtas today. It shows the power of joining a union. The tag line or slogan the SNAs are using is "Respect for SNAs". In my work in this area over several years, the lack of respect has become clear to me. I wish to link this back to the basic requirements. In an individual school, for example, the teachers can often be called by their second names while the SNAs will be called by their first names. This is a clear message to everybody in the school regarding who is deserving of more respect. Everybody can see and hear that and the children, more effectively and profoundly, can see that. It does not happen in every school, but it is the case in many schools. It would be "Mr. Kehoe" or "Ms Dolan" and then "Bernie" or "Michael". This sends a strong message.

SNAs have told me that the continuing professional development, CPD, available to teachers is not available to them. We have had the conversation around the allocation for next year only being released on 31 May. There are other issues in the system regarding July provision and the different rates of pay for doing the same job. On a day-to-day basis as well, SNAs are tasked with doing some pretty menial jobs in the classroom or school setting. Much of this is based, I believe, on the connection between the basic requirements to become an SNA and their status in the school and in the system. Therefore, this situation does not just depend on how a teacher or a school treats SNAs. It is about how the Department treats them. Would the Minister of State accept there is a link between the day-to-day disrespect some SNAs have experienced and this minimum requirement issue?

To give the Minister of State time to answer my questions, my other query concerns whether she is in a position to say she wants to get the accreditation recognised and change the minimum requirements for SNAs, and that she will go through a process of a review. Is it her stated objective, as the Minister of State, to change these things? I ask this because there are two types of ministerial responses in my experience. One type of response from a Minister or Minister of State is passive and states there is a review and he or she will see what happens after that. The other type of response from a Minister or Minister of State, however, states the outcome he or she wants and, while he or she will listen to what the Department is saying, he or she fundamentally believes the accreditation needs to be recognised and the minimum requirements need to change.

Those are my two questions. One was on the link between the minimum qualification requirements and the basic respect SNAs do or do not get. The second concerned the Minister of State's personal conviction in this area.