Special Needs Assistants: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel Gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir Curley. I welcome the Minister here. We all appreciate the opportunity to speak about this important issue because, no more than those in the Dáil, many of us have addressed this over the last over week or two, both on the Order of Business and through Commencement matters. I always use the term "school communities" in talking about education because there are so many pieces to the jigsaw of the education of a young person. Of course, parents are the primary educators but the school community is made up of teachers, SNAs, secretaries and caretakers. They all play a hugely important role in supporting the child at the centre of all of this. Special needs assistants are really the quiet backbone of Ireland's education system. Every day, in classrooms right across the country, SNAs provide safety, care, dignity and opportunity to the children who need it most. SNAs are not extras in our education system. SNAs are not optional in our education system. SNAs are absolutely essential. They often give children the confidence to walk into school knowing that they will be understood, encouraged, cared for and supported. The SNAs help create environments where inclusion is not just a slogan; it is a lived reality, and that is what we all want for the children in our schools. Conditions and pay are absolutely important, but the SNAs do their really important work, in my experience, with patience and with compassion that cannot be measured on any payslip. When the State invests in SNAs, it invests in children, in families and in good, inclusive communities. We cannot doubt for a second the investment that the State has made on an ongoing basis in special education and, in fairness, in SNAs. Only this week, St. Mark's in Newbridge, which is a special school, will have its formal opening. I had the opportunity to visit the school a few months ago. It is wonderful to see a state-of-the-art modern building serving the needs of the children who go there and have the opportunity to engage with the SNAs who do incredible work, along with the teachers. I want to take the opportunity to wish them well with their formal opening. I met a principal two weeks ago. We met about another matter but, obviously, this issue came up. She told me that out of an enrolment of 350 students, 60 of them had care needs and that number is growing, year by year. While it is welcome that we have 25,000 SNAs and we will have another 1,700 in September, the needs are growing for lots of different reasons, some of which lie outside education. However, within education we need to do everything that we can to support the children who are coming to us. When somebody has a child with extra needs within their family, everything becomes personal and every perceived cut becomes personal. It becomes personal not only maybe because of what is happening your family or your child, but because you recognise the struggle that other parents have had, so you take it personally when you see any other family going through it. Cuts or perceived cuts to SNAs are viewed in that way by many schools and many communities. I, too, stood outside the Dáil supporting the SNAs. I will always stand with SNAs and I will always stand with school communities. I do not think anybody has any issue with the review process. Review processes need to happen. Numbers need to be looked at, even though, obviously, this goes beyond numbers and beyond statistics. There is an annual review in relation to teachers. The Department and the Minister need to make sure the SNAs are where they are needed, and that is with the children that are in most need. We know the school population changes, year by year. Years ago, when I was a primary school teacher, you pretty much knew in September the children you were going to have for the year, but now that changes. Particularly in commuter belt areas, teachers are telling me that they often have a fluctuation of 30% a year, which is a significant amount of change. It is also important a school has the opportunity to request a review if it needs more SNAs, but there is no doubt that the communication that happened two weeks ago was handled really badly. It led to a lot of fear and huge concern. I welcome that, following the pause, it was agreed and the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, announced that there would be no cuts and those schools that needed the extra SNAs would get them. The Minister spoke about redeployment, which is important. The circular from 2014 is also important. Special education has changed a lot since then. We should not be afraid of reviews. We should ensure there is proper consultation with everybody who will be impacted. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-04