Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

None of what the Minister said explains why this year the process took a month or more longer than it did last year. As far as I am aware, this is the first time this decision was made during the summer, after schools had closed. People with children with special needs, SNAs and schools have been done a disservice and there has been no explanation given for why the process took so long. The system which has operated for the last number of years, which may be imperfect but nevertheless operates, has been blamed. Why did the system fail so spectacularly this year? I accept that there is a lot of manual work involved in determining need without a forecasting model but what was the reason for the late announcement of the allocations?

Given what happened, does the Minister believe that he and the Department owe the children, the SNAs and the schools an apology for the stress caused to them this week in terms of the delay in the making of this announcement?

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