Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will come back to the Minister of State's earlier reply when she talked about additional SNA supports. I welcome that additional resources are being put in there. The specific point I will put to the Minister of State is that the SNA exceptional need review took place over the summer. The results of that were available to the Department at the beginning of August. The schools, however, were only informed more than six weeks later in October. They must either go and recruit those SNAs or, if they were unfortunate enough not to succeed, go through the independent appeal process. In practical terms, this means that although the Department decided in early August that schools needed additional SNA support, those SNAs will not be in place until after the Hallowe'en break and until after the longest term in the year. Does the Minister of State believe that is an acceptable situation?

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