Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is great that the Minister is announcing all these extra hours. The public would state that this is an amazing achievement and that an additional 1,000 on top of the previous 800 is what we need for the children, the parents and to take the pressure off the teachers and SNAs. The difficulty is that many SNAs still work under very precarious terms. They do not know until May what will be their allocation for the following year. Previously, they did not know what the allocation would be until August or September, so that is a bit of an improvement but nevertheless, a person could end up with 0.6 or 0.25 of a post. Often, if the special education needs organiser determines that a child does not need as many hours, then it is a last-in, first-out situation. There is significant precarity and uncertainty in terms of who one is looking after, where one works and the hours one works. There is an outstanding issue of 72 extra hours that the SNA works in each academic year that are flexible within the school. SNAs often clean or photocopy material. They are not cleaners, they are special needs assistants. They are trained and value the work that they do, as, I believe, does the Minister. Can we look at the detail of the conditions of SNAs?

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