Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

The Deputy is correct in his analysis. Special schools are being reviewed by the NCSE. As I indicated to Deputy Crowe, the school in County Kildare forms part of that review. A decision may well be made to allocate to it an additional resource from the pool of 475 to which I referred. I am not entirely sure what is the practice, but I will inform myself with regard to it. However, there is a precedent and pattern from previous years. There is no intention to retain these posts rather than allocating them. I imagine that a number will be allocated between now and Christmas. A smaller number will be kept in reserve as the school year progresses. As a result of the State's loss of sovereignty in certain areas, we no longer have control over the employment control framework. This means that only a certain number of people can be employed in the public sector. As indicated, in order to be able to respond to a crisis, we need to have some reserves in place. These reserves will drop in number as the school year progresses.

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