School communities and the organisers of the protest outside the Dáil tomorrow over the Government's threatened SNA cuts want the Taoiseach to know, and for it to be known, that those protests will be going ahead in many places across the country. Although it is clear that protests and the threatened escalation of those protests have forced the Government to do a U-turn on the planned cuts to SNAs, the principal of my former primary school, Johnstown national school where some of the most severe cuts were proposed, told me this morning that although the school is delighted the Government has backed off on these cuts, she has no real assurance that they will not be back there again next year. That is the feeling out there. Nothing the Taoiseach has said to date gives people the assurance that he has understood the problem that led to these threatened protests in the first place, and that he is going to make sure they will not be there again next year. What does he have to say to reassure them?

I said already during Leaders' Questions there will not be any reductions in special needs assistants in our schools in the school year beginning in September 2026. There will be increases, but there will not be any reductions in our schools. There will be well over 25,000 special needs assistants, which will be an increase of 8,700 since 2020. That is expansion. We will then have the redeployment scheme.

It is still well short of need.

Workforce planning will be published and a new circular in response to that, which will give the template. No one has ever suggested to me that you have the same number forever in any given school. It depends on the need of the school at a given time in terms of the number of children it has who require supports and care. That has always been the case. The Deputy and everyone in the Opposition seems to be now suggesting there should never be any evolution.

Need is going up, not down.

Deputy Boyd Barrett, this debate does not work back and forth. Deputies get a minute each to speak. I respectfully ask them not to interrupt one another.