Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I am a qualified primary teacher and a former primary school principal. Outside the Oireachtas today, some of my colleagues and I and the Minister of State, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, met a group formed in 2010 which represents parents of children with special needs. I would like to reiterate here what some of those parents said to us today. They marched on the streets and then came to meet us. Many of the points they made succinctly describe what is happening on the ground.

I would like the indulgence of the House to put on record the criteria for special needs assistance. Circular 07/02 states:

The allocation of special needs assistant support may be made on a full- or part-time basis...and may be shared by named pupils for whom such support has been allocated.

It goes on to say:

It must be remembered when considering making an application for the support of a special needs assistant that a balance must be struck between allocating necessary care support and the right of the child to acquire personal independence skills. For this reason, the professional who assessed the child is in the best position to advise on the amount of support (full-time or a specific number of part-time hours).

When this circular was issued, there were approximately 370 special needs assistants in place, but the same circular still pertains for the appointment of special needs assistants, of whom there are now approximately 10,500 in the system. As a practising teacher, I suggest we need to review that document and make changes to ensure we can provide resources to our children.

There is a misguided belief that an SNA is tied to a child all the way through school. The system must be flexible and the school principal must be able to adapt resources. It is not good practice for a child to be tied to a particular special needs assistant for eight years. It is important that we make our children independent towards the end of their primary school education. Children present with many different types of special needs and we cannot have a "one size fits all" system. SENOs are finding it difficult to make decisions and there is also evidence that there are discrepancies between SENOs in different counties, with the result that more children in some counties get more resource hours than in others, perhaps because of the SENO's personality or how he or she interprets the rules.

See this speech in context