Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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219. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason special needs assistants have to wait up to nine months to receive their redundancy payments; his views on whether this delay is unacceptable and that it puts those who were already on low earnings in a very vulnerable position; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33327/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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My Department is currently issuing redundancy payments to Special Needs Assistants whose applications were received in December 2012. A large volume of applications were received during the period June - September 2012. A lower number of applications were received in the period October 2012 - April 2013 and these are being worked on in date order of receipt. Every effort is being made, within the resources available, to process these applications as quickly as possible.

For information, in accordance with my Department's recently published Circular on Supplementary Assignment Arrangements for Special Needs Assistants (Circular 37/2013), all SNAs who received notification of the termination of their employment due to redundancy from 1st May 2013 are deemed to be a member of a Supplementary Assignment Panel for SNAs. As a result, unless an SNA opts out of this Panel, the processing of applications for redundancy payments in relation to posts lost after that date will not commence until after 1st June 2014. To date, no applications to opt out of the Panel have been received by my Department.