Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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695. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the criteria by which special needs assistants are allocated; and specifically how her Department can guarantee the reasonable safety of a child who is allocated only a shared assistant, despite having been diagnosed with multiple problems, including profound global developmental delay, epilepsy with frequent severe seizures, and a high risk of sudden infant death syndrome; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [30368/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I wish to advise the Deputy 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. The criteria by which SNA support is allocated to pupils is set out in my Department's Circular 0030/2014.

The Circular sets out that SNA allocations are not made to individual children, but are made to schools to support the care needs of children with assessed special educational needs.

The deployment of SNAs within schools is then a matter for the individual Principal/Board of Management. SNAs should be deployed by the school in a manner which best meets the care support requirements of the children enrolled in the school for whom SNA support has been allocated. It is a matter for schools to allocate support as required, and on the basis of individual need, which allows schools flexibility in how the SNA support is utilised.

Should a parent be dissatisfied with the manner in which the resources or facilities which have been provided to support their child's education are being applied in school, they should raise this matter directly with their school Principal or the Board of Management of the school.

All schools were asked to apply for SNA support for the 2015/16 school year by 18th March 2015. The NCSE also continued to accept applications after this date in recognition that enrolments may not have been completed or where assessments were not completed.

The NCSE has now published details of SNA allocations for schools for September 2015 on its website.

All schools have the contact details of their local SENO, while Parents may also contact their local SENO directly to discuss their child's special educational needs, using the contact details available onwww.ncse.ie.