An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-17
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I have dealt with this extensively in the House. There are 4,000 schools in our system. By the start of the next school year, there will be up to 25,000 SNAs. As I said earlier, there has been a 45% increase in the number of SNAs over five years. I would caution against the breadth and the range of services the Deputy says SNAs should be obliged to provide. We need to be very targeted in our approach. The children who need SNAs the most should have them allocated to them.
The danger with mission creep is that sometimes the child most in need does not get the attention that he or she requires and deserves. We are bringing in other therapies, initially into special schools. We then want to spread that into mainstream schools. That is nothing to do with the SNA situation.
There should be regular reviews of SNAs to make sure the resource is targeted properly. I am sure nobody could object to that. The difficulty here as a result of the review the NCSE initiated last October - approximately 500 have been completed - is that the impact on some schools is too severe. This is in terms of the new school year, from September of this year.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-17