Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mairead McGrath for helping us put this motion together. My colleagues and I in the Rural Independent Group have called on the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Richard Bruton, to acknowledge a lack of job security for special needs assistants and to look at the obstacles preventing the full participation of special needs assistants in schools.

We have to ask if our special needs assistants are being treated by the Department as optional extras, instead of being seen as vital members of the school teaching staff. We have heard many promises from the Government that it will increase the number of SNAs but where has it delivered in facilitating the special needs assistants as permanent members of staff in our schools? In a recent debate on schools, where there were up to 140 amendments to a Bill, we called for a vote, not in any way to indicate what way we were going to vote. A Deputy to my far right was playing with her Twitter account and wrote misleading comments about Deputies Mattie McGrath, Michael Healy-Rae and myself to the effect that we had called for a vote against special needs. It was absolutely shameful carry on.

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