Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise once again respect for special needs assistants, SNAs. I had a wonderful trip on Tuesday with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Autism to Ballyowen special school, where I saw at first hand the great work all our SNAs do in that school, but I am also aware daily and weekly, as all of us in this House are, of the great work our SNAs do for so many of the children across this State. Yesterday, however, I received a number of phone calls from colleagues in Kildare who had found out at 4 p.m. yesterday that their jobs were gone. That is no way to tell anybody he or she no longer has a job.

It is disgraceful that those SNAs had to log into a website at 4 p.m. in the evening to find out they would have no jobs come September. These people have mortgages and families, and to find out that way is totally and utterly unacceptable. We all know, as I said, what our SNAs do for us, but they do much more for the families whose children attend these schools. There is a great attachment between children and their SNAs, who go above and beyond. They know the children inside out and they complement the teaching staff. To find this out on a website at 4 p.m. in the evening beggars belief as to what is going on. The SNAs tell me they will have to wait until May to hear whether they will have a job come September. This really has to change. Teacher allocations are announced, I think, in February and were probably into April this year. The three people to whom I spoke in a school in Kildare, who no longer have jobs, told me they ran home after their teaching day, at 4 p.m., to turn on their computers to find they no longer had jobs. It is wrong, it needs to change and I ask the Leader to raise this with the Minister of State with responsibility for special education.