Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Minister made a point in his introduction that provision has been made for up to 15,950 special needs assistants in total for 2019. At the end of May, we had press statements from the Department that there would be an increase of 800 SNAs in the next year. This is only a part of the story, however. Many SNAs at the end of May had their hours cut for next year. Some SNAs lost their jobs at the end of May. In some cases, it was to make way for SNAs on lower hour contracts. One SNA told Cork’s Evening Echo:

Many jobs were fragmented to .5 or .88 of a day, meaning people losing up to a fifth or more of their income. On the same day, many newspapers ... said ‘800 new jobs have been created’ with no mention of the job losses. It added salt to the wounds of those [almost 300 SNAs] ... who found out that they had lost their jobs via a website.

Another SNA, Frances Linehan, who works as an SNA in a DEIS school in Cork, told the same newspaper:

Special educational needs organisers, SENOs, are coming in and cutting people’s hours and this is affecting people’s income, as well as the continuity of care for the children in need. Parents are in the dark about this as well – they have no idea that SNAs are being split between so many children within schools.

It is important that the other side of the story is put on the record in this debate.

The Minister mentioned the pilot programme that will begin in September. It will involve 75 schools in the Kildare-Wicklow area, using an inclusion model with SNAs allocated new tasks in the course of their working day and week. This will involve taking on new responsibilities with speech and language, and occupational therapy. This new approach can be positive and I hope it will be. However, it will have to fully recognise the challenges that SNAs will face and the new responsibilities that they are taking on.

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Specifically, there needs to be training for SNAs if extra responsibilities are to be taken on and there must be a renegotiation of pay rates. If SNAs take on extra responsibilities, they must be paid fully and properly for same.

There has been an unfortunately long history of SNAs being treated poorly in their job security, wages and conditions in the workplace. I encourage every SNA to stand up for himself or herself, as so many of them have done, and I encourage them to join a union. More than that, I encourage them that, school by school, area by area and nationally, they should get organised to improve the rights of workers who provide such a vital service to our young people but who have been treated poorly in many cases.

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