Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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364. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the ratio of special needs assistants, SNAs, to pupils in mainstream classes at primary level; and the ratio for SNAs to pupils in mainstream schools at post primary in each of the years 1998 to 2016 and to date in 2017 by county, in tabular form. [34885/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I recently announced that 975 additional SNAs will be available for allocation to schools from September 2017 which is a 7.5% increase to meet the demands for the new school year.

A total of 13,990 SNA posts will now be available at a gross annual cost of €458 million. This is more SNAs than we have ever had previously and will ensure that all children who qualify for SNA support can continue to receive access to such support.

In total, the number of SNAs available has increased by over 32% since 2011, when 10,575 posts were available.

The NCSE has advised all schools of their allocations for SNA support for the coming 2017/18 school year. Details of SNA allocations which have been made to schools have been published on by the NCSE on their website at .

As the responsibility for the allocation of SNAs to schools resides with the NCSE, the information requested by the Deputy is not retained by my Department. Accordingly I have requested the NCSE to respond directly to the Deputy's question. In view of the fact that the NCSE was established in 2004, data for years preceding that date will not be available.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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365. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the ratio of resource teachers and learning support teachers to pupils in mainstream classes at primary level; and the ratio for resource teachers and learning support teachers to pupils in mainstream schools at post primary in each of the years 1998 to 2016 and to date in 2017 by county and by Dublin post code, in tabular form. [34886/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Details of the ratio of resource teaching and learning support teachers per number of pupils each year at primary and post primary school level for the years 2009-2017 are included in the table.

Due to the manner in which the allocation of resource teaching posts was recorded prior to 2009, where additional allocations were only made to schools once all surplus allocations in schools were accounted for, accurate details of the resource teaching allocations made prior to 2009 are not available.

Details of the number of resource teaching posts allocated to schools by the NCSE on a per County basis, for the years 2012-2017, are available at

Resource Teaching and Learning Support Allocations 2009 - 2017

*From 2012/13 GAM and Post Primary Learning Support allocation also provided for English Additional Language (EAL) Support. Since that time the GAM has been updated annually based on increases to mainstream classroom teaching posts, based on school enrolments.

Post Primary School

*Statistics for 2010/11 and 2011/12 included PLC students, excluded thereafter.