Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

95. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to ensure that the allocation of special needs assistants is done in a timely manner to facilitate school planning; the actions undertaken by his Department in this regard; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45511/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

In July last, when I announced that an additional 975 SNAs would be available for allocation to schools between September and December this year, I recognised that we needed a better system of SNA allocations for future years.

I said at that time that I hoped to have a more robust system where we would use the National Council for Special Education prediction models to inform the annual estimates process to enable budgetary provision to be made for the following year.

As a Government we have managed to achieve that. As part of the package of education measures in the recent Budget 2018, I announced that almost 1,100 additional SNA posts will be available for allocation to schools in 2018, over 960 of which will be available for allocation from September 2018.

Making that decision now will facilitate earlier allocations of SNAs to schools for the coming year once the application process for the 2018/2019 school year has been undertaken and concluded by the National Council for Special Education.