Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment the Rural Independent Group for tabling this motion. I am glad to hear the chaotic practices of allocating special needs assistants to schools at the last minute will come to an end. Last summer, schools faced significant delays with the allocation of special needs assistants. This situation has persisted over recent years, and delays have meant that special needs assistants were only allocated to children well after the schools were closed for the summer. This created great uncertainty and disruption for schools, parents and the special needs assistants themselves.

Each year, school principals and boards of management have had to endure the weekly charade of waiting to hear whether the Minister of the day had decided to announce allocations to meet additional special needs that arose as a result of demographic changes and increases in the number of individual students assessed in their own schools. I have had a number of cases in my constituency whereby young children with special needs due to start school in September were advised by the school principal that they could not be guaranteed a place as the school did not have enough special needs assistant support to cater for them.

This is a totally unacceptable case. A family with a special needs child should have no uncertainty about the child starting school and particularly whether he or she would be accepted in a local school. This school principal found it impossible to plan and did not know the level of service she could offer. This had a serious impact on families. Families with special needs children have enough problems in trying to cope without having this added pressure.

I have said many times that governing is not the accounting service Fine Gael seems to think it is. Government is about implementing policy in a timely way to ensure people receive the service they deserve in schools. The service provided by SNAs is invaluable. It can be unbelievable the way a child can be transformed when the proper service is available. It is absolutely imperative that we get the SNA service in schools right from now on.

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