Special Needs Assistants: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel The Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, is welcome. As the Minister, Deputy Naughton, acknowledged in her speech, the debacle over the past few weeks has caused much distress and worry to SNAs, parents, principals and teachers. It all arose from the result of the review of SNA allocation and how that was communicated and addressed. I commend the actions of SNAs, principals, teachers and parents who stood up and called out what they thought was very unfair. They only did so for parents to protect their children. Some of the SNAs who contacted me were worried about their jobs, and rightly so, but the most concern they had was for the children they are providing support to in the schools and the thought that those children would have to go without that support. I know a pause was announced and then an assurance was given that there would be no cuts in the next school year, with an additional €19 million provided. However, people are still concerned about what is going to happen after that. Circular 30/2014 contains a focus on primary care needs and granting access to SNAs based on primary care needs. We know that many more children are granted access to SNA support than those who just have primary care needs, and rightly so. If SNA access is withdrawn from a child in the classroom, it affects the whole class. The teacher will not be able to teach and the children will not be able to learn if one student in the class who has additional needs requires a movement break or needs to leave the class to regulate. If an SNA is not present, the teacher cannot ask that student to leave with being accompanied because it is not safe. Therefore, such children have to stay in the class. They are upset, they upset the rest of the class and the teacher cannot get on with teaching. SNA support is vital. I taught at second level for many years. I worked before and after there were SNAs in the school, and I saw the difference and the contribution that they made. I was the special educational needs, SEN, co-ordinator in the school for a time. I would have to look at the SNA allocation and decide, along with the principal, where SNAs should spend their time and to whom they should give their time. We would sometimes realise that we did not have enough SNAs for all the children in the school with additional needs and talked about appealing the decision. My predecessor as SEN co-ordinator told me that to appeal would be to risk losing some SNA allocation. That fear remains, whether it is realistic or not. Principals do not want to appeal the SNA allocation, even though they require more SNAs in the school, in case their allocation is cut. That is an issue that needs to be addressed. At the time, I knew well the special educational needs officer, SENO, assigned to the school. I had regular conversations with her. More important, she knew the students who were to come to the school as they transitioned from primary school to secondary school. She knew what their needs were, knew their parents' numbers and talked to them regularly. Parents could lift the phone and talk to her. I regularly meet parents and, when I ask if they have been talking to their SENOs, they ask who that is. They do not know who the SENO is. I do not know whether the role of the SENO has changed or there just are not enough. We know that the number of children with additional needs has increased. Perhaps there are not enough SENOs, but they do not know the children. I am hearing that not just from parents but also from teachers and principals. The SENO comes to the school on an irregular basis, stays for half an hour to an hour in a classroom and then judges whether a child needs SNA access. They do not know the children. If we are trusting principals to allocate SNAs fairly to the children on the basis of those with the most need, we need to start trusting them as to whether they need SNA access and how much they need without the SENO's input, if the SENO is not going to be more familiar with the school and the children in it with needs. Every year, we are reacting to a crisis as students return to school. There are inevitably students with additional needs who do not have a school place or who are placed in an inappropriate setting. The Department is working in silos that are not working together. Indeed, a number of Departments are not working together. We need more teachers who have specialised knowledge of special education and that is an ongoing issue. I know the training is going to be improved. We need more SNAs. No school would tell you that it has enough SNA access. You can imagine the alarm when schools heard allocations were to be cut. There is also an issue with building and the provision of additional space for special classes within schools. More and more schools are willing to open a special class, which is great, but some are already full to capacity space-wise and need additional modular rooms or new-build rooms. Decisions are being made to open classes in schools where there is physical space rather than where the need is. It ends up that students do not get their education in the local school with their siblings, or in the school nearest to them, but instead must travel a distance to a school that has the physical space. I do not know if that is an issue with the Department of public expenditure and reform, which may not be providing sufficient funds to open additional classes where they are needed. We have a number of Acts that deal with equality. The Equality Act prevents discrimination on the basis of a number of criteria, including disability. The Education Act means we are supposed to provide education for every person in the State. The Education (Admission to Schools) Act means that a child cannot be refused access to a school based on a disability. The most important is probably the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act. It was recently reviewed. The EPSEN Act provides that a child with SEN should be educated in an inclusive environment with children who do not have SEN unless it is not beneficial for the child or the other children. The Act defines SEN as "a restriction in the capacity of the person to participate in and benefit from education on account of an enduring physical, sensory, mental health or leaning disability". It is not just those with a physical disability who have a primary care need and require SNA access. The EPSEN Act is quite clear that all children need to get support so they can be educated in an inclusive environment. For too long we saw children who had a physical disability or an additional need of some sort segregated and put into an institution. We have moved a long way from that. We are moving towards an inclusive education system. However, we are going to reverse away from that and regress if we start to cut SNA access because it would mean that children are unable to access an education in the mainstream school, or in the special class in the mainstream school, because they will not have the supports to do so. They will end up refusing to go to school, which I hear from parents at times, because they do not get enough support. The school may put them on a reduced timetable for the day because it cannot cope. The State signed up to two conventions, one on the rights of the child and one on the rights of persons with disability. Those conventions state clearly that children, regardless or needs or abilities, should receive an inclusive education appropriate to their needs. The lack of early intervention for children in our schools is detrimental. We know that many children are not receiving the supports they need from an early age. As soon as a diagnosis is achieved or parents realise that their children are, for example, not speaking as much as they should be, they should be able to access speech and language therapy, occupational therapy or physiotherapy. That is not happening and it is having a detrimental effect on education in our schools. Teachers are not therapists. They are not able to provide the intervention that is required. Putting therapists into special schools and some other schools will help, but children should be getting that therapy in the community from an early age. That would make a huge difference to their ability to access inclusive education in the school nearest them. Parents should not have to fight for everything. They have stood up again to fight against what they thought was an unfair act. They are concerned about what is going to happen down the road. I welcome the that there is going to be proper dialogue about how we move forward, but it must take in more than just SNA access. It must take a holistic view of where we go with special education because the number of children who require additional support in our schools is increasing. The numbers are also increasing internationally. We are no different from the rest of the world, and we need to prepare for that. --- 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