Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for the response. I appreciate that the Minister has no role in determining the extra SNA allocation for a school. That is not what I am looking for. I am not looking for the Minister to make a determination but for an instruction or some communication with the NCSE to expedite the visit of the SENO. That is all I am looking for. The SENO needs to be on-site and to visit the school to see what I saw first-hand. As I said earlier, I have engaged with the NCSE as recently as today and I am happy that it will give this its urgent attention. This needs to happen quickly. SNAs and teachers love their jobs. Teachers want to teach and to be given an opportunity to engage with the moderate curriculum which they are given to teach, but they do not have the opportunity to do that because of the reasons outlined in my first contribution. When an SNA is dealing with an individual child, the teacher then becomes a de facto SNA. The teacher should be teaching. That is what we need to get back to and focus on. It all comes down to individual needs. I appreciate the unprecedented level of funding the Minister of State outlined at the start. The funding and resources that we are providing are extraordinary but we need to see them make a difference on the ground. The key point is that we need to cater for students' individual needs.

See this speech in context