Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In determining the resources and SNA supports required for a child with special needs to attend a mainstream school it is advisable to call on a suite of expertise from within the HSE, the medical profession and the NCSE.

That expertise emanating from within the NCSE is specialised, having been acquired over a certain number of years of working in the educational sphere with children with special needs and recognising the challenges they often face on first entering mainstream education. Nobody is suggesting for a moment that the professional opinion of health staff is not a valuable source of expertise to have in determining the needs of a child throughout his or her life, but in this unique setting within the school we must draw upon and ultimately trust the expertise of our network of special educational needs organisers, SENOs, under the guidance and expertise of the NCSE, in determining what exactly are the child's needs and the supports required for that child to successfully attend mainstream school. That is ultimately the judgment call that we must trust, and we do trust it.

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