Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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184. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if approval will be given to an application for a special needs assistant for a person (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5442/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) are provided to assist recognised schools to cater for pupils with disabilities, who have additional and significant care needs, in an educational context and where the nature of these care needs have been outlined in medical and other professional reports as being so significant that a pupil will require additional adult assistance in order to be able to attend school and to participate in education. 

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE), which is an independent statutory agency, is responsible, through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs) for allocating a quantum of Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support for each school annually taking into account the assessed care needs of children qualifying for SNA support enrolled in the school.

The NCSE allocates SNA support to schools in accordance with the criteria set out in Department Circular 0030/2014, which is available on the Department's website at www.education.ie,in order that students who have care needs can access SNA support as and when it is needed.  The Department’s policy is to ensure that every child who is assessed as needing SNA support will receive access to such support.

In considering applications for SNA supports for individual pupils, the SENOs take account of the pupils' needs and consider the resources available to the school to identify whether additionality is needed or whether the school might reasonably be expected to meet the needs of the pupils from its current level of resources. SNAs are not allocated to individual children but to schools as a school based resource.

Schools who wish to make applications for SNA support should apply to the NCSE. The deadline for applying for SNA support for the 2018/19 school year is 28 February 2018 and the NCSE aim to publish details of the SNA allocations to schools on its website in May.

All schools have the contact details of their local SENO and parents may also contact their local SENO directly to discuss their child's special educational needs, using the contact details available at .

As the matter raised in this question refers to an individual child, it has been forwarded to the NCSE for direct reply.