Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-30
============================================================

Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

I thank Deputy Lawlor for raising this important issue on behalf of St. Aidan's school community in Enniscorthy, and not just on behalf of the student or the students attending school in special classes, but indeed the entire school community, including teachers, parents, special education teachers and SNAs. I hear the Deputy's frustration. His frustration was mirrored earlier by one of the Deputy's constituency colleagues who also raised this with the Tánaiste today on the floor of the House. In case the Deputy missed that debate, I will just say that the Tánaiste committed to raising this with the Minister for education directly, asking her to arrange that either the Minister herself or the NCSE would make contact with that Deputy. I will certainly add Deputy Lawlor to that list to ensure he gets that same information and that same contact. I am very glad to hear that the Deputy has been in contact directly with the head of the NCSE and that he is working proactively to help to resolve this from a rationale perspective to give the information the school wants and should have gotten much easier than this. I appreciate that the issue here is not just for St. Aidan's and that the issue is with the process. I will absolutely provide that feedback to the Minister for education.
As the Deputy is aware, the National Council for Special Education has responsibility for co-ordinating and advising on the education provision and care support for children and young people with special educational needs in our schools, including the allocation of SNA support to schools. In relation to the appeals process itself, on completion of an SNA review the NCSE communicates the outcome to a school. If the school is not satisfied, it may submit an appeal of the outcome to the NCSE. The school has ten days to do so. Information, including guidance on the appeals process, is available on the NCSE website. The NCSE is currently processing a number of appeals and the outcomes of these will be communicated to schools shortly.
The Department and the NCSE are committed to delivering an education system that is of the highest quality, where every child and young person feels valued and is actively supported and nurtured to reach their full potential. I will provide the Deputy's specific feedback on the rationale. I note this is what was advised in the information on the website to show this is how one should submit the appeal.

---

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/dail/2026-04-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-30