Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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5. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will discuss the lack of notice given to schools of SNA allocations for the coming year; and if he will address concerns that SNAs do not know whether they will be in employment in 2018 in view of the fact that the 2016 to 2017 school year has now ended. [31912/17]

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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This question relates to the allocation of SNAs, which, for some reason, was inordinately delayed this year and took the good out of the announcement the Minister made yesterday. Owing to the failure of the Department to make this announcement a month ago, schools were left in confusion, SNAs suffered deep insecurity about their jobs and parents were left extremely worried for their children. I note what the Taoiseach said about changing the system for not next year and that any change made now would be too late in terms of the forthcoming school year, but I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on this matter.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I am glad that I was in a position this week to announce that 975 additional SNAs will be made available for allocation to schools from September 2017. Schools have been informed of this, following on from a Government decision this week on the matter.

This represents an increase of 7.5% in the number of SNAs for this year and a 32% increase over the years since 2011 in the allocation of SNAs. The method of allocation followed this year, which provides for the allocations to be made in late June-early July, is the same method that has been followed for the past six years. The Deputy is correct that this is not satisfactory. It was done in this way because there was not a satisfactory forecasting model for identifying at Estimate’s time the level of necessary provision. This allocation requires Government decision each year after the NCSE has done an assessment, which creates an additional bureaucratic obstacle in making these decisions. We intend, for the coming year, to make these decisions at Estimates time.

The NCSE has been working on a more reliable forecasting model which is now proving itself in terms of the reliability of the data for this year. The NCSE is undertaking a comprehensive assessment of this model, as the Deputy knows. We are keen to improve the SNA model. We have had consultations and people have indicated that they believe improvements can be made to the way in which the SNA service is delivered and other needs of children are met. The Deputy will be aware of the commitment in the programme for Government that speech and language should be delivered in-school to make it easier for children to access it.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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None of what the Minister said explains why this year the process took a month or more longer than it did last year. As far as I am aware, this is the first time this decision was made during the summer, after schools had closed. People with children with special needs, SNAs and schools have been done a disservice and there has been no explanation given for why the process took so long. The system which has operated for the last number of years, which may be imperfect but nevertheless operates, has been blamed. Why did the system fail so spectacularly this year? I accept that there is a lot of manual work involved in determining need without a forecasting model but what was the reason for the late announcement of the allocations?

Given what happened, does the Minister believe that he and the Department owe the children, the SNAs and the schools an apology for the stress caused to them this week in terms of the delay in the making of this announcement?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The announcement this year was earlier than the announcement in 2015 and only a few days off from the announcement made in 2016. A regular feature of this process is that it has to go through a whole of Government process of approval. Approximately €30 million is being committed to in the coming year and so not surprisingly agreement on that has to be processed through Government.

We have done the work to be in a position to discontinue the practice that has applied for the past six years, which has been unsatisfactory as the Deputy rightly pointed out. Work is under way for the forthcoming year and for the Estimates process to deal with it in a more satisfactory way.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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If the Minister is not prepared to give an apology will he at least give a guarantee that this will not happen next year and that the system will be sorted by then? The €30 million to which the Minister referred was allocated in the budget last year and was approved by these Houses at that point, so I am not sure what the rigmarole about it is now if it was already approved.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I made the point earlier that this year we are providing an SNA service for 34,000 additional children, which is 4,000 more than were available two years ago. We are expanding this service. We are providing a very necessary support to allow more children to fulfil their potential in the education system. I set as a major goal that we should seek to be the best in Europe in accommodating children with disadvantage or disability coming to the school system. I am delivering in that area. There has been a 41% increase in resource teachers over the last number of years. This year, I am providing 900 additional resource teachers and over the last two years, 2,000 additional SNAs have been provided. We are putting huge commitment into supporting the children about which the Deputy expressed concern. I am satisfied that the work that the NCSE has done means that we will have a better system for the future.