Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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Question 59: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of special needs assistants posts that were held back for the start of the new school year that have now been filled; the number of applications on hand and when schools that have applied can expect to hear about their application. [32567/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Deputy will be aware that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) is responsible, through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs) for allocating resource teachers and Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) to schools to support children with special educational needs. The NCSE operates within my Department's criteria in allocating such support. This now includes a requirement for the NCSE to have regard to an overall cap on the number of SNA posts. This number is 10,575 whole time equivalent (WTE) posts.

The NCSE has advised all mainstream schools of their SNA allocations for the 2011/12 school year and has recently published statistical information in relation to the allocation of SNA posts and resource teaching hours to Primary Special and Post Primary Schools. The information is provided on a county by county and school by school basis on its website at www.ncse.ie. In total, approximately 10,100 WTE SNA posts have been allocated to date for the current school year.

The NCSE retained 475 SNA posts in order to allocate them over the current school year in cases such as emergency, appeals, acquired injuries or new school entrants with care needs. The allocation of the 475 SNA posts is underway. It is expected that the bulk of the posts will be distributed to schools by the end of November with recruitment being undertaken by individual schools as soon as they are notified of any additional allocation. A number of schools have already started the recruitment process to fill posts allocated to them recently and others will start recruiting once they receive their notification.

The NCSE will advise schools in the near future of a process to review allocation decisions to ensure that correct procedures were followed and that they comply with my Department's policy. The merits of individual allocation decisions will not be open to appeal under this mechanism. I have arranged for the Deputy's query regarding the number of applications on hand to be forwarded to the NCSE for their attention and direct reply.