There has been a lot of commentary tonight to which I have been listening. I welcome everybody in the Gallery. Some of the commentary I agree with while some of it I fundamentally disagree with and, in my three minutes, I will try to explain as much as I can. As a teacher, I taught for 15 years in a school. I would have had interaction with our autism spectrum disorder, ASD, hub, which we had in Fermoy where I taught for most of my career. I challenge anybody, including the Minister and Minister of State, to find a better example of where an ASD hub is integrated into the mainstream school setting than in Fermoy where I taught. It was right up there with best practice. I disagree with some of the commentary over the past hour or so. Some people are alleging that we do not value SNAs. As I said, I worked in a classroom environment for 15 years. Some of the best professionals I have worked with over my career have been SNAs. When we were looking at professional development and people doing courses, in many cases, teachers would not do the necessary upskilling that was required. I think of instances where we had to start utilising EpiPens and so on in class. The SNAs were among the first to put up their hands to do many of those tasks. Let us be honest about it; they should not have been doing them. When the Minister and Minister of State are considering this over the next few months, I hope they broaden the circular that has been referenced here. I hope it recognises the reality on the ground in many schools and the practical examples I have just given. Fundamentally, I have an issue with calling this a review in the first place because a review is something that is ongoing. There was clearly such a gap between the last review and this proposed review that I think we should just call it what it is and should start from scratch and build up again. I do not think a review is the right term for it. I spoke to both the Minister and Minister of State over the past few weeks in relation to cliff edges in particular, and that is what we experienced here. There were schools, including in my constituency, where two, three or four SNAs were being lost because the gap between the reviews was so big. The Minister and Minister of State should consider some threshold or ceiling. Reviews have always happened. When reviews happened every 12 months, or when they were ongoing by the special educational needs organisers, SENOs, the changes might have been marginal. There might have been 0.25 of a gain of an SNA or 0.25 of a loss of an SNA, depending on the circumstances of the school. The problem, as I said, is the gap is so wide now that we are facing those cliff edges. There needs to be some mechanism built in where we do not face drops of such significance. I have a serious concern, and I hope to speak about it again tomorrow night, in relation to assessment of need. It is very difficult for SENOs to quantify the need in the absence of diagnosis. We are creating a further problem for ourselves in a couple of years' time. It is quite clear the demands that will be required of a school. If we allow what is being proposed to happen, where resources could be agreed by principals, SENOs and school management, in the absence of diagnosis we are actually going to create another problem further down the line and that needs to be re-examined.

Sentiment score: 0.11