Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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700. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason some schools are advertising for special needs assistant posts but the National Council for Special Education is not showing any posts. [23129/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, 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 teaching and Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support to schools to support children with special educational needs and additional care needs, respectively.

The NCSE operates within my Department's criteria in allocating such support.

All schools have been asked to apply to the NCSE for resource teaching and SNA support for the 2015/16 school year by 18th March, 2015.

Schools will be advised of their revised SNA allocations for the 2015/16 school year, prior to the end of the current school year.

While the majority of new SNAs posts are sanctioned at the start of each school year, SNAs can be appointed throughout the year according to local circumstances such as staff resignations, retirements or fluctuations in school SNA allocations in cases of new assessments of disability, new entrants, or emergency or late applications.