Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 5: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will provide a report outlining the way a decision is made by him in which children with behavioural or special needs may lose a special needs assistant; the appeals process currently in place and the amount of schools, children and parents that have been informed that they are losing their supports next year. [19504/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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As Minister, I do not make individual decisions regarding the allocation of special needs assistants to a particular child.

The National Council for Special Education, NCSE, is responsible for allocating SNAs to schools. The NCSE is in the process of advising schools of their SNA allocations for the coming school year.

Some 10,575 whole-time equivalent posts are being provided for the coming school year. To manage this limited resource, 475 of these posts will be retained for allocation over the coming school year to address significant emergency cases, new entrants with special needs or new assessments or injuries acquired during the school year.

The NCSE will advise schools early in the new school year of a review process to review allocation decisions to ensure correct procedures were followed and that they comply with my Department's policy. The merits of individual allocation decisions will not be open to appeal under this mechanism.

It will be expected that schools, before requesting a review, will be in a position to demonstrate that they have made every effort to manage their allocation of SNA posts to best effect.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Would the Minister agree that the critical issue is that parents must trust the SENO and the National Council for Special Education? The difficulty facing many parents who have been recently through the process is that there is a lack of trust, transparency and consistency. There seems to be a lack of consistency, not only locally in Ireland but internationally. The value for money review highlights that fact.

The value for money report, which is part of the focus on SNAs, stated that in focus groups other professionals referred to pressure and reported a lack of overall control of the situation or their inability to influence decisions relating to the needs of children. Even for those who are involved in the process, there seems to be a problem in that regard. Parents cannot understand that one child will get an assessment for 15 minutes and for other children there does not seem to be that on-site assessment. That is part of the difficulty.

I understand there are problems of funding etc. but the problem facing parents is that there is no consistency. There is any number of examples. Where there is equipment worth €2,500 to help a child see the teacher and the SNA is being taken away, for example, how does the child follow the teacher around the room?

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I understand the concern the Deputy expressed. I have had it expressed to me by parents in my constituency and around the country, and by many of the Fine Gael and Labour backbench Deputies. I hope the NCSE will be able to respond to the kind of comment Deputy Crowe and others have made in this regard.

The value for money report is a revealing document and should be read carefully by every Deputy dealing with parents who are in this area and who are looking for special needs assistants for their child. We are in a situation where we must cap the numbers. They have grown by approximately 1,000% in the past ten years to the current figure. There are 60,000 teachers in the system and just in excess of 10,000 special needs assistants, SNAs. Now, we must examine how best to deploy this capacity of SNAs. This is something I will continue to keep under review.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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I accept a cap is in place. Recently my colleague, Deputy Pearse Doherty, tabled a question about the number of special needs assistants employed in County Donegal. He was informed this was not readily available, which seems bizarre. How are these assessments carried out? It appears there are difficulties across the board.

How many of the children assessed have been taken out of DEIS schools? I realise some SNAs are being held back for the September period but the difficulty for families is to try to get into a school in the meantime. This continues to be a problem and we are going to hit crisis levels come September.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I am unsure what the response to getting the statistical data on a county basis will be but I will make inquiries in that regard. If the data are available I will make them available to all Deputies in the House and to Senators as well.

The position regarding holding back a certain number of posts was genuinely misunderstood across the sector at the time. It was a good management precaution. We are now at the end of one academic year and people will be presenting for schools between now and September and onwards. It was considered prudent to hold back something of the order of 10% of the total allocation to establish what new, legitimate claims and requirements for special needs assistants would manifest themselves. If these did not transpire then we would be in a position to go to the full allocation of 10,575 posts. That is the position.

Deputies will understand that I am loath to be in a position to have authorised the NCSE to allocate on the basis of what the council knows now only to find ourselves confronted next September with new demands which do not surface until that time and to be utterly unable to respond to these. It is prudent management to do what we have done. I will make inquiries to ensure that reserve is rapidly deployed.