Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Taoiseach the best of luck in the future. I have known him for a few years here and, to be fair, I have always found him to be very forthcoming and reasonable to deal with, so I wish him the best.

I raise the issue of SET allocations. This is something I have raised with the Minister for Education previously. I taught for 15 years and I have a fair idea of how the model worked in the past. I understand how the Department of Education has removed complex needs as an assessment criterion because the HSE and the CDNT teams have only provided it with 5% of the required information. No longer will students' disability, be it a child with Down's syndrome or with a hearing or visual impairment, be taken into consideration for those allocations. The criterion of complex needs has been removed and these SET allocations will only be based on literacy and numeracy performance. I think this is wrong and a mistake. On the basis that only 5% of the information has been provided, I think it is only fair and reasonable to ask that this SET review be deferred.

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