John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

I apologise to the House and to Senator Doherty for my late arrival. I was at another meeting. I thank Senator Doherty for placing this matter on the Adjournment. It gives me the opportunity to clarify to this House the position on reviewing decisions made by the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, in the context of resource allocation.

As the Senator may be aware, the National Council for Special Education is responsible, through its network of local special educational needs organisers, SENOs, for allocating resource teachers and special needs assistants to schools to support children with special needs, and also help to establish special classes where a need has been determined. The NCSE operates using criteria determined by the Department of Education and Science in allocating such support. Since the establishment of the NCSE I want to put on the record of this House that it has enabled significant improvements to be made in the delivery of service to pupils with special educational needs, their schools and parents.

The NCSE will undertake to review any decision taken by a SENO on foot of a request from a school or parent or guardian, when accompanied by relevant additional information, which may not have been seen or to hand at the time of the decision. The NCSE has outlined this process in its Circular 01/05.

All schools have contact details of their local SENO. It is also open to parents to contact their local SENO directly to discuss their child's special educational needs, using the contact details available on the website, www.ncse.ie.

I take this opportunity to thank the Senator again for raising the issue and I thank the House for listening to the response.