Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I will start with the final question. The temporary teachers will be in the system as long as the individual child who has the individual allocation is in the primary school. Only when the child leaves will the hours be lost to the school.

The children in the low-incidence category, that is, those with a more severe disability, are dealt with through a process that is entirely separate to this scheme. They will continue to be assessed separately and will continue to be allocated their hours separately. Since those allocations are given to individual children, it would not be appropriate to link them to the high-incidence children for the purpose of creating permanent posts. The advantage of the high-incidence allocation is that the posts in question will exist irrespective of who the individual children are. Even when the low-incidence children, that is, those with a more severe disability, move to secondary school, the high-incidence allocation will remain on a permanent basis. This is why it is not possible to link the two categories.

Boys and girls are being treated differently. I do not know of individual circumstances but there is a different allocation for boys in recognition of the fact that, for some reason, the incidence of learning difficulties is much higher among boys than girls. We have also made a different allocation to the disadvantaged schools.

I appreciate that short notice was given coming up to the end of the school year. However, it was important to make the correct decision. An allocation of 660 teachers was worth waiting for in respect of both the transitional and permanent posts. I am conscious that the allocation was made at the same time as the allocation of the mainstream teachers. Many of the phone calls received from schools throughout the country have related to all of these factors. The mainstream allocation, the resource teacher allocation and the clustering arrangements all came together. The Department has been very flexible regarding the clustering arrangements.

Some schools came up with their own solutions and ideas. These are being worked through in conjunction with the INTO. There were a number of difficulties at the outset but, from all our information, they are being sorted out. The process is settling down. The Department is working very closely with those concerned.

There is not an appeals system per se because the allocations are based on school numbers. However, we are seeking to ensure that the allocations of developing schools, for example, will be considered from September. Where schools might be redesignated under the new DEIS programme or where they fall under the disadvantaged category, we will ensure their needs are met immediately under that scheme.

The only reason children would lose resource teaching hours would be if the special educational needs organiser determined over the preceding months that they no longer needed them. However, it is still open to schools to make a one to one allocation or an allocation to small groups. Research shows that where some children do better on a one to one basis, others do better in groups. It is up to the individual school to use its resources. Knowing that the resources are available on a permanent basis is a great reassurance for a school because it knows it will be able to identify the children with special educational needs very quickly and allocate resources to them according to need.

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