Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

The Department does not allocate resources because this is the responsibility of the council. Given that it is a specialist council which draws on professional inputs, I will not second-guess it as a politician nor will the civil servants in my Department who lack the necessary qualifications second-guess it. I regard the appeals system as independent and the Department has no role in either the allocations or the appeals. I will consider the Deputy's suggestion but I am not convinced that a case can be made for an independent appeals body nor do I think that simply because there is a reserve of SNAs they should be allocated. It is only January and we have six months to go in the school year. Students with special requirements may still enrol in schools and if we had already allocated the SNAs we would not be deploying resources responsibly.

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