Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

I have little about which to disagree with Senator Tuffy in this regard. Where the special educational need is deemed by the principal of the school — who, as a professional, is rightly the first arbiter of the case because of his or her statutory status in education — to be relatively uncomplicated, there is a clear onus on the principal to take a sequence of actions culminating in the drawing up of a local education plan within the school and its implementation. Where it is deemed that the education plan is not working, it is my understanding that there is a clear statutory onus on the principal to serve notice on the National Council for Special Education to set a process in train, initially by calling on the special education needs organiser to put a team in place to draw up a plan for what is, subsequent to the delivery of the preliminary plan, deemed to be a more complicated special education need. Am I correct in this? If so, it renders superfluous Senator Tuffy's proposal.