Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I thank him for being here. We mentioned during our Private Members' business debate the other week that many families are being left in complete distress as a result of what I consider, being kind, the inefficiencies within the NCSE. A fortnight ago I raised the case of Sonny McElvaney from my constituency with the Minister of State. He is a young boy who has significant additional needs. He has made huge progress, more than anybody would ever have envisaged, largely due to the efforts of his parents, especially his mother. His mother is very proactive. She engaged with the NCSE last November to inform its officials that her child would be attending school, to identify the school of choice and to state categorically the child would not be able to attend school unless he had one-on-one SNA support. That was not her view and she would say she did not like having to come to that view, but it was the view she had received from the professionals who had dealt with Sonny. She contacted me in June. It is October today and from last November she had been engaged with the NCSE. In June, she told me the NCSE had been in touch with the school and the likely decision was the school would be asked to split the one SNA it currently has between two children and that simply was not possible. I will give an outline of how frustrating this must be for parents because it has been frustrating for me as an elected representative who deals with official bodies all the time. I contacted the NCSE immediately after that. That is going back to 6 June. I indicated there was substantial evidence to say Sonny required one-on-one supervision and an assistant and would need a full-time SNA. I received an acknowledgement from the NCSE. A couple of days later I sent it the occupational therapist, OT, assessment that had been carried out, again stating the need categorically. On 19 June, I had reason to meet NCSE officials and provided additional substantive documentation. I later sent correspondence from the school, with the permission of the other child's parents, that showed that child needed a full-time SNA. On 9 July, I received an email from the NCSE which referred to my previous correspondence. I am sorry; it was on 14 July the NCSE confirmed an appeal had been received and an outcome would issue before the end of July. On 25 July, I asked whether there was any update on that. On 1 August, I got notice from the NCSE that the school's submission would have an outcome likely next month. On 11 August, the family was contacted by a Fine Gael representative, not by the NCSE, to tell them the appeal had been unsuccessful. It took until 12 August for that to be officially notified to the school by the NCSE. Correspondence was ongoing constantly with the NCSE. On 20 August, I sought, on behalf of Sonny's family, an urgent meeting with the NCSE-----

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-----and I received a response on 21 August that basically said------

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-----no further application or information is required at this time. I am only halfway through this story. Can the Minister of State see the frustration this family is going through, which I share?

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I thank the Minister of State. I sent the OT report to the NCSE on 9 June last year. I do not know whether that report had previously been submitted to the NCSE but I know mountains of documentation were submitted. Just to give a sense of this, after all the assurances that this was going to be dealt with in July, the email I received on 21 August stated: I appreciate your ongoing attention for the enclosed. Duly confirming as per recent correspondence to the school, all documentation and information relating to the SNA review for the school has been recorded by the NCSE and provided to the SNA review panel. No further application or information is required at this time. I had to respond to the NCSE to say I did not know what that meant and to ask what I was supposed to tell the family. On 26 August, I received an email from the NCSE stating that it appreciated my follow-up correspondence and confirmed that the outcomes of all outstanding SNA reviews were due to issue to the school as soon as possible in the first week of September. Then we go on, waiting for the first week in September. No update arrived. On 9 September, indication was given to the school that the review was complete and that the school remained at one SNA. The school is back a number of weeks at that stage. Sonny could not go. This child had a full-time SNA in preschool and then it has essentially been withdrawn from him. Since then, we have been trying to raise these issues. In all of the correspondence I receive from the NCSE, officials finished with this absolutely insulting line: "Schools are expected to operate within their existing allocation." There are two children in the school who both need a full-time SNA and there is one SNA. One of the children is going to miss out and at the moment it is Sonny because he is the newest child in the school. When I first started engaging with the NSCE on this particular issue, I thought the case was clear-cut and it was so blatantly obvious that this would be resolved fairly quickly. The fact that it is not concerns me. How many Sonnys are there the length and breadth of the State whose parents do not have the wherewithal or even the energy to knock on the door of their local TDs and have them do some of the fighting for them? If TDs are getting information from the NCSE that is turning out not to be actually what is happening, what are parents being told? That is a serious question. This particular issue needs to be addressed but we need to make sure there are no Sonnys out there who are being denied their school place because of incompetence - and that is what this is.

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