Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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Question 241: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a decision has been taken to grant a school (details supplied) an additional special needs assistant to offer full-time assistance to a person; if not, when the decision will be taken; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15551/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that there has been no overall reduction in the number of Special Needs Assistants in our education system.

The Deputy will be aware that it is necessary to ensure that educational services are delivered within the resources available due to the current fiscal position. I intend to prioritise and support special educational services. However, I cannot re-visit the previous Government's decision to place a cap on the number of posts available under the Special Needs Assistant (SNA) scheme. This number is 10,575 whole time equivalent (WTE) posts. This is a significant number of posts and unlike other areas of the public sector vacancies are being filled up to this number. It also represents continual increases in the number of SNAs over recent years. It is considered that with equitable and careful management and distribution of these resources that there should be sufficient posts to provide access to SNA support for all children who require such care support to attend school, in accordance with Departmental criteria.

The NCSE has issued a circular to all schools advising of the allocation process for the 2011/2012 school year. A key feature of the amended scheme will be to provide for an annual allocation of Special Needs Assistant support to eligible schools. The NCSE asked schools to submit all applications for SNA support to them by 18th March, 2011 and intend to inform schools of their annual SNA allocation as soon as possible, in advance of the coming school year. However, while this process is ongoing it is not possible to predict the numbers of Special Needs Assistants that will be allocated to any school, including the school referred to by the Deputy in Sallins.