Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

As soon as the classroom teacher identifies the need it means the resource is already in place within the school and he or she may ensure the child can avail of it. It certainly gives the schools more certainty instead of waiting from one year to the next to find out what the allocation will be and it makes the posts more attractive to qualified teachers. However, there is some confusion. We are not talking about special needs assistants, SNAs. Perhaps Senator O'Toole confused the terminology. The special needs assistant will continue to be allocated to children with a defined need——