I speak plainly about the role of SNAs and what they mean to children, families and schools and why the current situation has caused such anguish and confusion. What special needs assistants bring is “S” for security and safety, “N” for nurture and needs and “A”, they are advocates and assistants in our schools for our children who have additional needs. They are not add-ons to schools as somebody already said. They are not an extra that we might like. They are absolutely essential workers in our schools. I know the Minister and Minister of State know that because we have had these conversations before. What has happened is that the actions the Government and its agencies have taken have eroded all of that trust. The difficulty now is that they will have to earn that trust back. I know they both want to do that. What has happened is they have been forced to make announcements late at night to say there will not be any cuts. This is echoing Covid times, which is quite triggering for a lot of principals, when at five o'clock on a Friday there would be announcements saying they needed to action something by the next week. Announcements late at night are not great. There needs to be meaningful engagement and long-term planning. There are real challenges here with this focus on SNAs. If we move a bit from that, there is a number of things that are glaringly confusing about what is going to happen with special education. When there is no need for a diagnosis in 2027-2028, how is a school going to figure out what the needs will be for a child coming in? What will that mean for the mild, general learning disability schools? Will they no longer exist? Catch-all is no good for anybody because those students are thriving right now. When we take that service away, that is something that will be an absolute mess. That is something that will come up again in the future. Last night on "The Late Debate" a parent rang in and said she had spoken to so many parents who feel lucky they get an assessment of need, a school place and that they have a SNA for their child. There should be no luck about this. This is a fundamental basic need and requirement that this State should be providing to any child who needs it. When we are not able to do that as a society, we are failing literally everyone, if we cannot look after the most vulnerable in our society. Tonight, there will be protests outside the Dáil and, as previously said, throughout the country. There are three asks. The first concerns the circular from 2014. I know the Minister and Minister of State have accepted this needs to happen. We need to move on. The role has evolved. We need to let a new circular come out to explain exactly what that is and the limitations and absolute ability for what SNAs actually do in real life in schools. The second ask is that there needs to be consultation with all stakeholders by the Government. I am thankful to the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, for accepting that he will do that. I know the Taoiseach said that yesterday when I asked him during Questions on Policy or Legislation. If I can help in any way to facilitate that, I will. I know people want to talk about this with him. I know there will be respectful dialogue, so I look forward to that. The third thing is that the full redeployment model and the full role of SNAs needs to be moved out. I reiterate the point I made yesterday. Redeployment for teachers works because they teach a curriculum, and they also have a relationship with young people. An SNA's role is relationship based. It is a skilled role. If you do not have a relationship with a child, the social and emotional regulation of that child will not happen. The relationship is fundamental. Redeployment is very important and needs to be nuanced. The Government cannot repeat the mistakes that have happened. It needs to learn from this. This is a really good learning moment. We need to bring humanity back into the classrooms and into the policies. I look forward in assisting in whatever I can with that.

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