Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

On the children the Deputy mentioned, I will not be specific but that is why this process is important. If we do not know about a child and their needs, it is hard to identity and allocate support to them. For any child known to the NCSE in Kerry or anywhere, as far as I and the NCSE are concerned, there are places available and being provided. That is being worked through at the moment. The biggest challenge is in Dublin and we are trying to work through that.

The new system the Minister of State and I are putting in place will bring things forward. The NCSE has written to all schools and highlighted to parents that they should notify the NCSE by 1 October if their child will require a special education place or special education school for next year, so we can allocate those places by 31 December 2025. We are bringing everything forward by four months to make sure this time next year we are not still in this position talking about allocating children.

On SNA allocation, I will have to look at the figure in parliamentary questions the Deputy mentioned, but the figure I have is we will have 23,1000-plus towards the end of this year. That includes the 1,600 extra. It is a significant increase, 30% more than we had five years ago. Adding that to the SET teachers we have, it is 44,000 extra supports in classrooms for the 79,000 teachers we have. It is a huge increase but we want to and will do more.

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