Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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207. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her plans to extend supplementary redeployment panel access to Montessori-trained teachers such that they would be eligible to apply for permanent teaching positions in special schools without having to depend on obtaining a contract of indefinite duration; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42278/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The core function of the redeployment arrangements is to facilitate the redeployment of all surplus permanent teachers to other schools that have vacancies.

Thereafter, schools are required under the panel arrangements to fill permanent vacancies from supplementary panels comprised of eligible fixed-term (temporary/substitute) and part-time teachers.

The supplementary panel application process for eligible fixed-term (temporary/substitute) and part-time teachers for the 2016/17 school year is set out in Circular 0058/2015.

The Supplementary Special National Panel is in the process of being phased out since the end of the 2012/13 school year and is used only for filling permanent teaching posts in special schools that are not otherwise required for the redeployment of surplus permanent/CID holding teachers. No new applications have been accepted to the Special Supplementary National Panel since 2012. There are a small number of teachers remaining on the Supplementary Special National Panel since that time, who have not yet secured a permanent teaching post.

This decision by the Department, in consultation with the Education Partners, to phase out this panel reflects the wider availability of primary teachers in recent years who are qualified to work in all settings which was not the case when this panel was originally set up.

The recruitment and appointment of teachers to fill teaching posts is a matter for the individual school authority, subject to procedures agreed under Section 24(3) of the Education Act 1998 (as amended by the Education (Amendment) Act 2012).