Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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Sure but what I cannot understand is this. Let us say we have had a week, from last week, when the Minister of State had a meeting with the parents, we met outside and had this discussion regarding the places. How long does it take to pick up a phone to a school to say it has a certain number of places in their school, and to ask has it allocated them to a particular student in the school or are they free? We are talking about 25 phone calls, which is, from what I can see, a maximum, where they would ask, "Are they available or not available?" and if they are available to students that are outside of the current cohort it has at the moment, then we have students here who are looking for that place. I find it quite incredible given that there is such a limited amount. We are not talking about hundreds here but a couple of dozen of phone calls being made to schools to say they have these places, and to ask if it is available or if it has been assigned to a student in the current cohort of that school. We have had seven days since that meeting last week, let alone the months we have had with regard to the NCSE's knowledge about their students - the likes of Bradley and Ruben, who I mentioned. There were a lot of names last week. These are two of the names I forgot to mention but I wanted to get them on the record as well. We know all of these people. It has been a solid week now and yet those parents cannot be called today to say that those places are either available or not available. I do not think that is acceptable.