Ms Martina Mannion:

In the context of the engagement and close co-operation between Departments, it is important that the committee has our Department and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth before it today. There is very strong collaboration between our Departments on the key issues, including supporting children with special educational needs. There is a cross-sectoral group on disability issues. There is also a national education and health forum, which comprises the Health Service Executive, the National Council for Special Education and the National Educational Psychological Service, working very closely together. To give the Senator reassurance on the practical day-to-day issues, we are working very closely on the ground. She covered a number of issues and I will ask my colleague, Mr. Doody, to talk about the transitions because they are really important and something we are focusing on. What is very important in what the Senator touched on is language. We really appreciate the importance of language and its right use. We want to make sure we use the right language, use it in the right way and bring people with us in that regard. It is challenging to make sure we get it right all the time. For instance, "autistic person" and "person with autism" are used interchangeably in the engagements. We have worked with our communications unit to make sure we are rewriting and redrafting our circulars and our language. We see the review of the EPSEN Act as essential because a lot of the language we use is underpinned in our legislation. It is an essential thing to get right, and we are very conscious of it and are working hard to make sure we do.

The other thing the Senator talked about is the importance of the SNAs in our school system. We recognise the 20,000 SNAs as being an essential, key component of the educational community. They are hugely valued. Our school system could not operate, our children with additional and special educational needs could not go to school every day, if we did not have our SNAs in the system. We really brought a renewed focus on supporting SNAs in our system. To give the committee some indication of that, until maybe the past year or so there was just one principal officer within the area of special education; there are now four, three of whom are here today.

As a Department, we have really ramped up our internal resources. One of those new, dedicated units we have established is the SNA workforce development unit. We started that unit in December 2022. There are a number of key focuses in the unit, namely, the role and duties of the SNA, the minimum entry requirements, the quality assurance of the SNA service and the collaborative practice, which is to look at the schools quality framework that already exists in our schools but does not specifically reference SNAs. We want to make sure that happens. We therefore now have a dedicated team within the Department and it is looking at all issues.

We were at the Fórsa conference recently. My colleague in that area and I attended. There are strong, collaborative working relationships with Fórsa and with the school management bodies to ensure that SNAs, who provide such an essential service, are valued and supported in our system. The committee will see a lot of good work in that area in the next year or so. The Senator spoke about pay and conditions, which are dealt with as part of the national wage agreements. Colleagues within the Department are working with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on that.

Another issue the Senator raised was how we had managed to support children with special educational needs in our system. Until we got additional, dedicated posts looking across policy and provision, we were very much stuck in the "urgent" category. That was, generally speaking, related to special class places, special school places and home tuition. It was not doing policy. Having taken additional teams into the Department, we have been able to make progress on, for example, the EPSEN review, a greatly expanded summer programme and the work Mr. Doody has spoken about regarding the behaviours. There are also the autism guidelines, which are a phenomenal resource in the system. In the past year, we have dedicated time and resources to our school transitions programme. I will ask Mr. Doody to tell the Senator about our school transitions programme pilot.