Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

The basis on which we are delivering special needs assistants is under the 2014 circular, which has allowed us to grow the SNA workforce by nearly 60%. It is a whole-of-government approach. It is a very serious issue for families and school communities. We are all engaged. The Minister, Deputy Naughton, and I have had multiple conversations and meetings over the past number of days and weeks, right over the weekend. We are engaging extremely carefully as to how we will proceed. We had a number of meetings this morning as well.
The Deputy asked me to clarify a few points in relation to his meeting tonight. If a school has gone through an SNA assessment or gone through with the SENOs and it was clearly demonstrated that additional care was needed in that school, that has to be stood over. If the school demonstrates additional care is needed, we are about ensuring the SNAs are working towards that care that is needed. There was never any discussion that a school would lose its SNA immediately; it was always going to happen from 1 September, not now or at Easter or whatever. It was always within the school year 2026. That was very clear at all times. We are pausing it because there has been so much concern about the process. We have to be extremely confident in the process we put in place such that all school communities and education partners have confidence in it and that we can go forward with confidence in it. There was mention of the removal of diagnosis. We cannot remove that unless we have a robust process in place in which all education partners are confident. We are working on that currently. It will take some time to make sure we have a robust system in place. This is a significant policy change. We have to make sure we get it right. I assure the House and all Members that we are working extremely carefully with the National Council for Special Education, us as elected members and Department officials. We have seen a number of attacks of various different types over the past couple of days. I assure the Deputies that when we have this done, we will have it right. We take everything seriously. We understand the special needs assistants, the children, the families and schools.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-19