Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour)
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503. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the proportion of her budget that is earmarked to support special needs education; and the number and proportion of teaching posts dedicated to meeting special education needs, at primary and post-primary levels, in the current year and for each year since 2007. [39856/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that some €1.3 billion will be spent in support of children with Special Educational Needs this year, which represents approximately 15% of my Department's budget.

The equivalent proportion of expenditure from 2007 to 2010 was approx. 10%, 10%, 11% and 14% each year while from 2011 to present it represented approximately 15% of my Departments expenditure Approximately 80% of this expenditure relates to salary provision for Special Needs Assistant Support, special class and special school teachers, along with resource teachers and learning support teachers in schools.

I wish to advise, however, that the majority of pupils with special educational needs attend mainstream classes and are therefore supported both by the mainstream class teacher and additional learning support or resource teachers. Some pupils attend special classes for part of the day and mainstream classes for other parts of the day. Most teachers in the educational system therefore provide for the education of some pupils with special educational needs. For this reason it is not possible to provide definitive details of the number of teaching posts which support pupils with special educational needs in primary and post primary schools each year. I wish to advise, however, that as part of Budget 2015, I recently announced further increases in Resource Teaching posts in order to meet increased demand and to ensure that children will continue to have access to additional supports in school.

This Government has been resolutely committed to protecting, and in some instances increasing, the level of investment being made to support children with special educational needs at a time when there has been a requirement to make expenditure reductions across a range of areas. It is an area of spending which has been prioritised above most other areas by this Government, despite the enormous pressures on all areas of public spending.