To be quite straight about this, the heart of this problem is the 2014 circular and the recognition only of primary care needs of children. If you spend 30 seconds in this country talking to a special needs assistant about their job, you will know that circular does not even nearly reflect what SNAs do every day. It is a crucial part of the job, but they do so much more: breaks with children who are overstimulated or overwhelmed or who might need even to go for a walk for a few minutes, classroom assistance for other children, children who are a flight risk and children who are school refusers. Those children are not recognised in the same way when it comes to an SNA allocation as those with primary care needs. That is wrong. In 2014 Circular 30 was introduced by a Labour Party Minister for education. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. Reviews are in and of themselves not necessarily bad. We see reviews every year when it comes to teacher allocations if the pupil-teacher ratio changes in schools, and they are not necessarily bad for SNAs, but as long as they are relying on the 2014 circular, they will not be fair on school communities, teachers, principals, SNAs or the children and families they support. I welcome that the review has been paused. How the NCSE approached this is unacceptable and wrong, and I cannot shy back from that because I have spoken to principals who have faced those letters coming into their schools saying they will lose some SNAs. The individual who wrote the letter did not even put their name at the end of it for the principal to have someone to talk to afterwards. That is not an appropriate level of public service either. Over the coming months the committee on education, of which I am a member, will do quite a lot of work on this. The NCSE and the Department of education will be before us, as I am sure the Minister and the Ministers of State will be at some stage too, and I will want to discuss the 2014 circular. It is essential. Next year we will have 25,000 SNAs in this country. That is brilliant, but let us have a circular that reflects the work they actually do.

Sentiment score: 0.07