Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is the road to travel and we will travel it as far and as quickly as we can. I have been able to ring-fence the amount of moneys available for its implementation. We have capped the number of special needs assistants, SNAs, but there are pressures on the system. This year, for example, the assessment process shows there is an increase in the number of overall special needs children coming into the system. We are going to have to find ways of doing more with the same amount, not less.

I understand the sense that for many parents of children with special needs the only tangible support they can identify as coming from the wider community is measured in a SNA or a resource teacher. If there is any alteration to that, it can be seen as the withdrawal of support by a community. In some cases, if a SNA is there purely to provide toilet training, for example, and it has been achieved, there should be a way the young person with special needs can graduate. That is the whole purpose of the intervention. It is not custodial or palliative in that sense but an intervention to adjust the gap between normality and children with special needs. In some cases through research and intervention we can do that.