Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

It is certainly not the intention to ignore such children. Those children will be included in an allocation that will ensure that resource teaching will be available in the school even before the child joins the school. This is to avoid a child having to wait until first or second class or even beyond before a need might be identified. Resource teaching will be available in the school as soon as the teacher notes that extra assistance might be needed by a child. The aim, therefore, is to arrive at a position in which need will be targeted recognising that a percentage of the population, estimated to be around 3%, needs specific allocation, while approximately 10% of the populace is acknowledged to have learning difficulties in literacy and numeracy.

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