Special Educational Needs
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

Reviews are ongoing and we will have further engagement, along with the schools the Deputy mentioned. Over recent weeks we have announced a number of inclusive special classes as well, which is 47 in total. Of those, 32 are at post-primary and 15 are primary schools. These have been welcomed by the school communities where we are providing the resources. The school communities should look at what we have done in other schools as well because this is a hugely important and significant policy change which is being welcomed across the school communities.
The Government is continuing to invest hugely in SNAs and in ensuring we have SNAs right across the school communities, be they special schools, special classes or in mainstream classes. The value of the special needs assistant and the role they play in enabling students to reach their full potential, and in some cases to allow them to engage within the education system, is hugely important to the Minister, Deputy Naughton, and to me. We understand that. A lot of work has been done on the workforce development plan, the circular and the redeployment. If there are existing schools that the Deputy needs us to look at, we can certainly do so. I can assure the Deputy that we are growing the number of SNAs into the future.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28