Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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429. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills why a person (details supplied) in County Offaly has not received a response to an application under a National Council for Special Education scheme; what is an acceptable timeframe to process such applications, given that this person is attending school with parents and cannot be supported by a teacher outside of the classroom as there is no teacher available, and that the parents have received no information from her Department as to what stage the application is at; why the parents have not received this; and when the school will be allocated the resource hours to allow this pupil to follow the proposed reintegration place developed by the National Educational Psychological Service, the persons' parents and the school. [2166/16]

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, while the criteria for the allocation of resource teaching support is set out in DES Circular 02/05.

All schools were asked to apply for SNA or resource teaching 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 published details of SNA allocations for schools for the current school year 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 on www.ncse.ie.

Details of the manner in which a school, or parent, may appeal an SNA allocation decision is also available at www.ncse.ie

As the question raised by the Deputy relates to an application for support for an individual child, I have arranged for this question to be forwarded to the NCSE for direct reply to the Deputy.