In advance of today's meeting, apologies were received from Deputies Catherine Callaghan, Aisling Dempsey and Ryan O'Meara, and Senator Linda Nelson Murray. I welcome everyone today. I ask anyone who is attending remotely to mute himself or herself when not contributing so we do not pick up any background noise or feedback. As usual, I remind all those in attendance to ensure their mobile phones are on silent mode or switched off.

Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. As the officials are within the confines of Leinster House, they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to this committee. This means that they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure it is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person or entity outside the Houses or an official of the Houses either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

The item on today's agenda is inclusive education and the allocation, roles and training needs of special education teachers, SETs, and special needs assistants, SNAs. I warmly welcome Mr. John Conneely, assistant general secretary, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI; Mr. Shane Lambert, assistant general secretary, Fórsa; Ms Catherine Quirke, chair, Fórsa Munster SNA branch; Mr. Diarmuid Creedon, official, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO; and Ms Anne Howard, assistant general secretary, the Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI.

I now call on the witnesses to make their opening statements in the following order: Mr. Conneely, Mr. Lambert, Mr. Creedon and Ms Howard. Each will have five minutes, following which we will take questions from the members.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the invitation to appear on behalf of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland. ASTI represents more than 21,000 second level teachers in Ireland. Our members work in voluntary secondary schools, community and comprehensive schools and other post-primary settings. They include mainstream classroom teachers, special education teachers, year heads, guidance counsellors, school leaders and teachers involved in curriculum implementation. Every day, ASTI members work with students with additional and special educational needs and with SNAs.

ASTI’s position is that inclusive education requires proper funding, clear roles, adequate training, professional time, manageable class sizes and real engagement with those who work in schools. Special education teachers must be given proper prominence. SETs are central to identifying need, planning supports, teaching students, advising colleagues and reviewing progress. Their work includes direct teaching, assessment, student support planning, consultation with subject teachers, co-ordination with families and external agencies, and support for transitions.

This work must be recognised in SET allocation, timetable provision and professional learning. SET need in schools is identified through the continuum of support, using teachers’ professional judgment, assessment evidence, transition information, student support files, parent and student input, and professional reports where available. ASTI believes that SET allocation must be transparent, predictable and sufficient to meet the real profile of need in post-primary schools. Schools should not face sudden or poorly explained reductions in SET provision.

SETs must have access to adequate specialist training within timetabled professional time. This training should not depend on teachers giving up personal time. Schools also need access to clinical and therapeutic expertise in the SEN area, including timely advice from relevant professionals.

SNAs play an essential role in enabling students with significant additional care needs to participate in school life. Their work supports access, dignity, independence and belonging. The role must be clearly understood. SNAs are not substitute teachers. Teachers retain responsibility for teaching, learning, assessment and classroom pedagogy. Both roles must be respected and clearly defined. The ASTI believes that the SNA Workforce Development Plan must be implemented, reviewed and further developed through genuine engagement with education partners, including SNAs, teachers, school leaders, parents, students, etc.

The ASTI's recent experience of senior cycle reform is relevant. To date, the ASTI does not believe the Department of Education and Youth has engaged sufficiently with teachers' professional concerns. In a March 2026 survey of ASTI members carried out by Red C, teachers raised significant concerns about workload, resources, assessment, implementation and whether teacher submissions had been reflected in final curriculum specifications. Consultation must affect policy, resourcing and implementation. Engagement must be practical and ongoing. Working groups and stakeholder forums are useful only if they deal with concerns raised by those working in schools. Teachers need structured professional learning on how best to work with SNAs in post-primary settings. This should include collaborative planning, student support planning, supporting student independence, confidentiality, behaviour support planning and role clarity.

Teachers must also be provided with professional time. Collaboration between teachers, SETs and SNAs cannot simply be added to an already crowded school day. It requires timetabled time for planning, review, communication with parents and external professionals, and student support planning.

Training must not be limited to SNAs alone. Inclusion is a whole-school responsibility and requires whole-school capacity. The ASTI believes restoration of the post-primary pupil-teacher ratio is essential. The current general teacher allocation ratio of 19:1 in free education post-primary schools does not adequately reflect modern classrooms, SEN provision, special classes or increased demands on teachers, SETs and school leaders.

Allocation systems must be transparent and predictable. Schools should not face sudden or poorly explained reductions in SNA or SET support. Students require continuity. Families require confidence. Schools require time to plan.

Properly funded inclusive education supports participation, independence, well-being and better long-term outcomes. Underfunding inclusion does not remove cost; it simply moves the cost elsewhere in the system. The ASTI asks the committee to recommend a transparent and predictable allocation of SET and SNA supports; sufficient SET provision to meet identified student need; specialist training for SETs within timetabled professional time; access to clinical and therapeutic support in the SEN area; professional learning for teachers, SETs, SNAs and school leaders; timetabled professional time for collaboration and planning; restoration of the post-primary pupil-teacher ratio; clear role definition; and adequate funding for staffing, co-ordination, buildings, training and student support services. Inclusion must be resourced in every school, every classroom and every community.

I thank the members of the committee. Fórsa welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Joint Committee on Education and Youth regarding inclusive education and the allocation, role and training needs of SETs and SNAs. Our trade union represents over 18,000 SNAs working in primary, post-primary and special schools. Our colleagues from the three teaching trade unions will be able to address the issues arising for special education teachers, therefore, our submission will focus on the issues arising for SNAs. Ireland has made significant progress in developing a new, more inclusive education system. However, increasing student diversity, rising numbers of children with identified special education needs, and growing complexity of need have placed considerable pressure on schools, teachers, SNAs and families.

As regards the allocation and the role of special needs assistants, SNAs provide essential care and access support for students with additional needs who would otherwise not be able to participate in education to the fullest extent. The SNA allocation process has changed many times since SNAs were introduced into schools in the late 1970s. Initially, an SNA was allocated to a specific student. More recently, SNAs were allocated to schools depending on the profile of the student population. The latest SNA allocation Circular 0049/2026 confirms that SNAs are allocated to schools on the basis of assessed need following a review by the NCSE.

SNA allocations were effectively frozen from 2019 until 2026, with very small numbers of posts being lost while new posts were added to the system in new and developing schools and special classes. During those years, the NCSE did not carry out reviews of SNA provision in mainstream classes. In February 2026, the NCSE started to release the outcomes of recent SNA reviews of provision in mainstream classes. The full outcome of the NCSE reviews has not been published. What is known is that hundreds of SNA posts were declared surplus to requirements. It is important to note that this action was taken before SNAs were able to access a redeployment scheme, which immediately gave rise to the risk that hundreds of staff would face redundancy. The rationale put forward for the decision to reduce SNA allocations in mainstream classes was that the level of need in those classes had decreased.

The reviews were frozen and withdrawn by the Government in February following significant public outcry, protests by SNAs, parents, unions and students, and political opposition. We still do not know the full number of posts that would have been lost had all the reviews been released. We have not received any explanation from the NCSE as to why it released those decisions on cuts to SNA jobs before a redeployment scheme had been finalised. Schools reported to Fórsa and other stakeholders that no detail or rationale was provided by the NCSE as to the detailed reasons for reducing SNA allocations. In some cases schools were informed of the loss of the majority of their SNAs without adequate explanation.

It is important to consider the allocation of SNAs in the context of the education for persons with special educational needs, EPSEN, legislation and the right to an inclusive education that must be provided to every child and every student. Withdrawal of SNA supports on that scale would have presented insurmountable difficulties for students who rely on their SNA for critical supports. The justification put forward by the NCSE and the Department of Education and Youth was that the SNA posts should be transferred from schools where needs had decreased to schools where the assessed level of need had increased. To do this before SNAs had access to redeployment, without providing any rationale or adequate reasons for each decision, was completely unacceptable, unjustified and unwarranted. Those actions destabilised industrial relations and called into question the extent to which the future of special education provision can be seen as safe and secure.

The controversy over the NCSE reviews highlighted the restrictive nature of Circular 0030/2014, which sets out the role of the SNA and forms the basis of NCSE decision-making on school allocations. That circular stresses the primacy of primary physical care needs over secondary care needs when considering the allocation of posts to schools. The extent to which a rigid interpretation of those criteria can affect the educational prospects of students with autism and other needs can be seen by the level of concern when the SNA reviews were announced.

The 2014 circular reflects the long-held view that SNAs are allocated to schools primarily to assist students with hygiene and toileting needs. This is an outdated perspective. The role of the SNA has developed and expanded to include needs set out in the recently published new Circular 0032/2026, which states that SNAs are allocated to schools to meet core care needs, including assisting students with regulation of behaviour as well as assisting with hygiene, medication, mobility, visual and hearing difficulties, caring for students with a catheter, non-nursing care needs and feeding. The circular also sets out a range of student support duties that SNAs also carry out, including support for learning, assisting with therapy supports, assisting with transitions, fostering student independence, maintaining the dignity of the student and other duties. This circular is currently the subject of consultation with SNAs. The outcome of that consultation exercise will indicate if SNAs can identify with the duties set out and if they recognise that the document fully comprehends the complexity of the work they carry out.

The withdrawal of the NCSE SNA reviews did allow for further engagement on the future of the SNA allocation model. Fórsa's position has always been clear in that we believe the Government must view the SNA workforce not as staff employed under a scheme but as a special needs service available in every school.

The allocation circular for 2026-27 makes clear that the NCSE reviews, which would have reduced SNA posts, will not be implemented for the next school year. From the start of the 2027-28 school year the circular states that not more than one SNA post will be reduced in any single year and that schools with an allocation of only one SNA post will keep that post. It would be helpful for the NCSE to now recognise that reality, explain how they intend to address SNA allocations within this context and specifically how they will use the new circular on the role of the SNA to assess the need for SNA posts in a school.

Key to the difficulties with the allocations experienced by all stakeholders are two issues: first, the issue of funding and, second, the lack of certainty on the future of SNA allocations. The Government needs to fund more SNA posts and if the overall number of 26,000 SNA posts is not sufficient to meet the needs of students, then more posts need to be delivered. The attempt last February to rebalance provision would have removed resources from many students who needed SNA support in order to prioritise students in other schools where the level of need for SNAs had been assessed as greater. The Government should strive to meet all needs and ensure that every student has the support they require to maximize their educational opportunities.

The SNA allocation model has changed so often no one can be certain what the future might hold. If a redeployment scheme is agreed with SNAs, and this is currently subject to consultation, then SNA job security will be improved. However, certainty over the future availability of SNA support and genuine job security will only ever be delivered if the SNA scheme is replaced with an SNA service. The Department has agreed to cease the use of the word "scheme" to describe SNA provision and that is helpful. The decision to retain single posts in schools on a permanent basis is also helpful and a first step towards a service-based approach. To deliver an SNA service each school should be provided with a minimum number of posts which would be a baseline. They would keep those posts on a permanent basis. Such arrangements require the Department to recognise the need for an SNA service and to establish baseline allocation figures.

In respect of the training needs of SNAs working in our schools, the recently published Special Needs Assistants Workforce Development Plan contains new provisions relating to SNA training and development needs, including the introduction of a minimum educational qualification at QQI level 6 and the replacement of the 72 hours obligation with dedicated time for learning and development within a new learning and development framework. Those elements are subject to the ongoing consultation exercise and we would not wish to pre-empt the outcome of that process. However, we can state that the emphasis on SNA training is welcome, and that the national SNA training programme has been successful and has provided a means for SNAs to access quality training paid for by the Department of Education and Youth. We wholeheartedly support the continuation of the programme.

The role of the SNA has never been subject to more scrutiny or commentary than at present. There are elements of the new Circular 0032/2026 that SNAs appreciate and there are areas on which they have concerns. If SNAs decide to accept the new provisions, the role of the SNA will be clearer and will recognise the range of complex work carried out. That will have to be reflected when decisions are made on SNA allocations to schools. We thank the committee members for the opportunity to address them today.

The INTO is the oldest and largest teachers’ trade union in Ireland. It represents 55,000 teachers at both primary in the Republic of Ireland and primary and post-primary level in Northern Ireland. We welcome the opportunity to address the committee today.

The current SET allocation model represents a significant improvement on the previous general allocation model for high- and low-incidence needs and provides schools with more flexibility in managing their SET allocations. However, with the upsurge of children with complex needs now enrolled in primary schools, further expansion of the special education teacher resourcing model is urgently required.

First, the INTO is calling for the introduction of a dedicated special educational needs coordinator, SENCO, role in primary schools. As our schools have become more inclusive, significant time is required for co-ordinating supports, overseeing student support plans and ensuring continuity and quality of provision. These responsibilities are currently managed by our overworked principals and assistant principals or absorbed into existing SET allocations, reducing the time available for direct support of pupils.

Second, overcrowded classrooms remain a massive issue. Inclusive education becomes significantly more achievable when teachers have manageable class sizes. Every mainstream classroom now includes pupils with a broad range of learning, social, emotional and behavioural needs. Reducing class sizes to the EU average of 19 pupils as a minimum must be viewed as an inclusive education measure as much as a general education measure.

Finally, we are particularly concerned about the potential impact of declining enrolments on the allocation of both mainstream and special education teachers in the coming years. We believe that the criteria used to determine SET allocations at primary level should be reviewed urgently to ensure that schools and pupils do not lose teaching supports.

Inclusion should not be something that exists only for pupils with identified needs. Today almost every classroom contains pupils requiring varying levels of support. The Government’s ambition should be to move towards a model where one SET is allocated to every mainstream class, allowing genuine collaboration between teachers and early intervention for pupils. With this in mind we urge the Department of Education and Youth to allocate one SET to every mainstream class.

The role of the special education teacher has evolved dramatically over the past decade. To fulfil this role effectively, today's SET requires knowledge and expertise across a remarkably broad range of areas. These include: education legislation and policy; identification of need and understanding of referral pathways; understanding a wide range of disabilities and additional educational needs; assessment literacy, screening and interpretation of professional reports; development and monitoring of student support plans; neuro-affirming and inclusive practice; universal design for learning; literacy and numeracy interventions; regulation-first approaches; pupil well-being programmes; and supporting transitions between early-years and post-primary settings and primary schools.

The breadth of expertise expected of SETs demonstrates that this is a highly specialised role requiring ongoing professional learning and support. Many teachers undertake postgraduate study at diploma, master's and doctoral level to develop specialist expertise required to support all pupils’ needs. The INTO strongly calls for the reinstatement of qualification allowances at diploma, master's and doctoral level. If we expect teachers to acquire specialist expertise, we should acknowledge, encourage and incentivise their professional learning.

The quality of education is ultimately dependent upon the quality of the teacher. While SETs require specialised expertise, inclusive education cannot be viewed as the responsibility of SETs alone. Every teacher has a role to play. For this reason, the INTO is adamant that all teachers should have access to sustained, high-quality professional learning for inclusive education and not further pilot programmes or limited capacity one-off webinars.

Professional learning must be delivered in a way that enables meaningful participation and engagement. The INTO therefore calls for high-quality, in-person training that is fully substitutable and takes place during the school day. Schools should also be provided with one day a year of non-contact time to facilitate planning and implementation of inclusive practices. An example of this is the positive feedback we have received on the NCSE's relate framework training. Schools report that this training is practical and relevant to the realities of inclusive practice in their classrooms. It is helping teachers build capacity while also positively influencing perceptions of the NCSE within schools. The committee should call for additional investment in NCSE teacher professional learning programmes, ensuring that high-quality training can be expanded and made consistently available to all schools nationwide.

The INTO also welcomes the whole-of-staff training on the revised child protection guidelines. This whole-of-school model must be replicated as a priority for systemic training needs on the guidelines for addressing behaviours of concern and crisis situations, revised codes of conduct and the continuing NCSE relate framework.

The INTO remains adamant that the best educational resources available to primary school children are fully qualified primary teachers who have the time, resources and expertise to devote individual attention to them.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the opportunity to address them today. I am an assistant general secretary with the Teachers Union of Ireland. We represent 21,500 teachers, educators and lecturers, including special education teachers and the subject teachers who, between them, deliver inclusive education in our post-primary and special schools every day.

I will begin with what is working. The TUI recognises that the State’s investment in special education is real and significant, with some €3 billion this year, an SNA workforce approaching 25,000, and 174 new special classes at post-primary level for the coming year. We welcome this investment. We support the principle of needs-based, inclusive education without reservation. However, investment alone does not deliver inclusion. My central message is a simple one: headline investment has not yet reached post-primary classes in a form teachers can use.

The gap between Ireland's stated ambition and what is actually possible on the ground is not a failure of individual teachers or SNAs; it is a structural failure and requires structural solutions.

I will give the committee a sense of what that means in practice. Our members report caseloads of 50, 60 and more students. At those numbers, meaningful individual support is simply not possible. They support students whose needs are real and urgent but do not score in the allocation model such as students affected by trauma, autistic students and girls whose ADHD or autism is identified only at second level after years of masking. They carry out the assessment, planning, parental liaison and documentation the system now demands, largely in time that does not exist on the timetable which means their own time. The SET allocation model restated again in Circular 0012/2026 still excludes complex needs as a factor. We ask that it be restored. I want to be clear that this is not a return to a diagnostic model or diagnostic gating. Complex need can be reflected through the care register and the continuum of support the system is already adopting as a measure of the level of need a school actually carries. That strengthens the needs-based model; it does not contradict it.

I also ask the committee to take a lesson from the events of earlier this year. The collapse of the SNA allocation review caused real anxiety for students, families and schools. The lesson is not that reform should stop; it is that reform must be done with the professions which deliver it, on evidence, by agreement and with phased transition rather than cliff-edge withdrawals of support. That principle should govern every change to allocation that follows.

On that basis, the TUI asks the committee to recommend the following. We too are looking for the formal, statutory establishment of the SEN co-ordinator role in every post-primary school. That must have defined responsibilities, protected leadership time, administrative support and proper remuneration. This work is currently held together by the goodwill of overstretched staff, and goodwill is not a resource the system can keep drawing on.

We need a funded, school-based programme of inclusive education for all school staff from the front door to the back. It needs to include everybody. We also require universal design for learning training for all teachers. This must be fully funded within the schools.

We also seek the restoration of the qualification allowance for teachers who hold a specialist qualification. In every other profession, specialist skills are recognised and rewarded but not in education. We need an independent, co-designed review of the post-primary SET allocation model that can respond to change in need during the school year and not two terms later. We want additional allocation to schools, one which recognises that the number of students presenting with additional educational needs has increased significantly and the complexity of those needs has also grown. Schools should no longer be forced to make difficult decisions regarding which interventions they can provide and to whom.

The SNA workforce development plan needs to reflect the valuable role SNAs play. This review of the role must also deliver qualifications, ongoing and sustained continuing professional development, CPD, and ring-fenced time for collaboration with the SEN team. We require a binding commitment that no allocation criterion for SETs or SNAs is changed other than by negotiation and agreement, with phased transitions and no cliff edges.

We ask that a comprehensive review of the workload associated with special education provision be conducted. As stated earlier, it is evolving and changing. Many members of the committee have worked in education. If they were to walk back into their school, I am sure they would find it a very different from the place they left. I can certainly say that for myself, as somebody who has left teaching. I go back to the practitioners now and they talk about a very different landscape from the one I left, and I am only gone from full-time education about five years. It is a very different landscape so the workload needs to be reviewed. A review needs to be conducted and its findings need to inform strategies to better manage that workload, including streamlined and digitised record-keeping templates which will allow for a continuity from primary to post primary, so those records can be brought forward.

We also want reduced SET allocations or ring-fencing, so there is a limit to the number of cases any individual SET teacher is asked to carry. We also ask for ring-fenced time for collaboration and communication with families and outside agencies. We are told time and again professional collaboration is the key to successful education, so that needs to be implemented.

I will leave the committee with this. A system that exhausts its specialist teachers cannot deliver inclusion consistently. Our members do this work with extraordinary dedication but commitment cannot substitute for resources, structures and training. Ireland has made the commitment to inclusive education and we share it. What remains is to resource it and the students it exists to serve because we cannot afford to fail them.

I thank Ms Howard and all the witnesses. We will now go to members' questions. There are six minutes per member. I usually allow a 30-second overrun. I ask members to make sure they give time for witnesses to respond. They might hear a tap occasionally. If so, it just means they should wrap up because we try to keep everyone on schedule as best we can.

I thank all of the witnesses. I will focus initially on the teaching unions and then put a question to Fórsa, if I have time at the end. We are having these sessions because there is a crisis in special education. Anyone who listened to the opening statements from people on the front line would note the level of commonality. There is an understanding of the problems and almost a unified set of proposals in terms of solutions. That is a huge frustration for me, as a Member on the Opposition benches. The solutions are available but it is about making them happen. My questions are to draw out on the witnesses' experience and proposals, specifically in relation to the SET allocation model, the criteria, the process and how they think it could be improved. What does the co-design collaborative process look like? There was a call in a couple of instances for a SENCO role in every school. Is that the point of contact for the school? Will the witnesses sketch out the current system and what an improved system might look like? I might start with Ms Howard.

That is an interesting question. In order to do this, because I am gone from the classroom, I have engaged with a lot of people doing a co-ordinating role, namely, principals, teachers and co-ordinators. I say this very reluctantly, and "reluctance" is probably too soft a word. People are doing the co-ordinator role in a school but there is no remuneration. Sometimes they do the post on the basis that they have already taken it from the allocation of posts to the school. They have designated somebody but it cannot be drawn from that allocation of posts in the school because when you go for a post with responsibility in the school, if you understand the managerial structures, you go for a promoted post, an AP1 or AP2 post. There is no designation of what that post should look like. It is a general application process for a general post. This is a very specific post requiring a very specific skill set that somebody must engage with so it cannot be done through the general allocation of posts to the school. It also has a massive workload. It needs to be described. The difficulty right now is the person may be doing it in a voluntary capacity, with an AP1 post or an AP2 allocation of a post. The problem is there is no end to the duties they are assigned, whether it is RACE, testing students on arrival, pre-testing of students, meeting parents or doing external reports. Whatever it is, that is the job of the person now called a SENCO in a school but there is no such post. There are repeated efforts in documentation from the Department to use that terminology to describe the role. The unions have repeatedly said the use of that terminology should stop until the Department resources and actually appoints somebody to that position.

I do want to say that work is being done and it is absolutely incredible. The difficulty is in allocation and the designation of allocation. It is one of the huge workload challenges for schools, to go back to allocation. When students arrive in post-primary schools, the first thing the SET team needs to do is a whole raft of testing to establish the baseline for the students. They need to identify the needs, whether literacy, sentence comprehension, numeracy or whatever the need may be. Into that mix comes the fact that some students come into that space who may have English language difficulties or should have had a diagnosis but did not, and it is now required at post-primary level.

Part of that might be due to masking. There are multiple reasons students may arrive into our space at post-primary level where a diagnosis has not occurred. I talked to my daughter this morning who is teaching in a primary school and she spoke about the difference getting access to autism classes makes. Again, I hate labels, but it is a terminology that describes a set of services training provision that is given to students. She said the difference is night and day for those students who have access to that.

This is being done by a team of people who do not have an allocation of time in most instances and there is a difficulty. One of the things that really broke my heart when I listened to teachers speaking about this and people doing the SENCO role was they said they constantly feel like they are failing, that they never get wins and they never get to the end of their workload. They come to the end of the year and do not feel like they have concluded and finished their curriculum. If you are teaching the leaving certificate you think, "Great, I have finished the curriculum now and we will start revision for the leaving certificate, junior certificate or whatever", but SENCOs do not feel like they are getting to the end of what they need to do because there is always another hurdle. There is always something more that is required to be done and the provision is not there to meet the need.

On paper, the provision that is there looks remarkable but the reality on the ground is that is not what people are facing because the level of need coming through the door is far more complex. The difficulty is it does not account for a temporary intervention that might come in. If you make the intervention in first year, by second or third year, or even the end of first year, that intervention may no longer be needed but there is nothing in the system that allows for provision for temporary interventions to be made. We need to be given greater flexibility back. It cannot be that I give it to, say, Elizabeth because her needs are more complex and have then exhausted my allocation of what is available in the school, but my need is not so great so she will totter along because we just do not have the provision, or you have teachers clamouring in their own time in order to meet the need. This is a subject we could talk about for multiple days. There is no end to the length of conversations I have had with people. It is about increasing allocation and making sure our allocation model meets the needs that are coming through the door. The resourcing of a SENCO position in a school is essential.

Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe as ucht a bheith anseo. Aontaím le chuile rud atá á rá acu. On what Ms Howard said about the workload, I am less than two years out of teaching but I remember coming back after every maternity leave and everything having changed - the post being changed and the workload increasing. I hear where she is coming from. There is a lot there.

Mr. Creedon referenced bringing back the allowances. I do not believe the SET training in college is sufficient. I did all of my CPD training on my own time. I paid for classes for myself because I had heard I was going into SET. Definitely, we need to bring the allowances back because not everyone is in a position to take on this additional CPD. We really need to focus on that to get our teachers to the level required. The training should be altered to do that. I agree with everything.

Mr. Conneely talked about the SET CPD, which is where I have an interest. What does an ideal model look like? Is it in person, online or SET specific? What are Mr. Conneely's views on that?

If you are an SET, you are involved with the student support plans. There is a move away from this diagnosis model where you would have expert clinicians providing reports. Teachers at the minute are very concerned they are being asked to do a job that previously clinicians were doing. It is a source of stress because if you are a teacher you are an advocate for the student, and if you are filling in a student support plan that you feel you are not trained or expertly equipped to fill in, it is a source of stress in that you may not be picking up on something you should have picked up on and could be depriving a student of some benefit they could get. We need to look at the idea of getting adequate training. We are talking about training that is provided by clinicians or somebody who is an expert in that area, not necessarily by somebody who has had a bit of training, which happens in senior cycle training sometimes in that subject area they might be doing. We are talking about some kind of training from a specialist that is adequate. A model needs to be developed for this.

There is training at the minute but it is not being rolled out to the teachers when they need it. They find that when they are looking for it they cannot get it at times. They find that if there is a new special classroom setting in a school there is training rolled out for that, but for the SETs there is not this level of ongoing training within school time that is adequate. We hear within the ASTI that there is a lot of stress around what SETs are being asked to do. The World Cup is on at the minute. Imagine a manager asking a player to be a Ronaldo when they are a defender, as I would be if I were playing football there. They are asking people to do something they are not really adequately trained for. Adequate in-school training is essential. I know there is a willingness from the NCSE and the Department to provide this training but that model needs to be improved. There is capacity to improve it but they need to work with the teacher unions to develop a model.

It is 20 years since I was at university. I know the training I received for SET was not up to scratch at all and I was thrown in the deep end. Has that changed in universities during the past 20 years?

Schools that have initial teacher education, ITE, are looking at providing extra training for student teachers around special education. They are looking to ensure that student teachers spend a portion of their time in special class settings. It will be an experience for them going into those rooms now because of the level of complexity we have in those schools.

Going back to the Deputy's statement about the qualification allowance, it is really important to recognise, as the Deputy said from her own experience, teachers are doing this off their own backs. It is the goodwill of our principals and teachers that is shoring up the whole thing at the moment. The majority of teachers who go out and do that bit of extra study to try to improve themselves bring that back to their classrooms. They bring that back to the teaching and learning in their settings. It is important that is rewarded.

It is really important to recognise the quality of teacher we are providing to the system. All of the assessments, such as programme for international student assessment, PISA, and trends in international mathematics and science study, TIMSS, consistently score Ireland as very high. That quality of teacher is the reason special education has not fallen completely down. It is because of the goodwill of teachers going out there, upskilling themselves and taking that hit financially. It is important those qualification allowances are reconsidered because it feeds back into our pupils. It ensures they can achieve and thrive in the classroom. Teachers are now coming to a point where they are tired. The expectation in a system that is letting them down is very high. Yet, we still see teachers go out there and upskill to try to improve themselves and ensure the children in their classes can thrive.

It is not even just the financial hit; there is the time it takes. I went back to do my master's degree. I had two kids at home and I was commuting twice per week to do that because I did not feel I could do my job without the improvement.

That deserves to be acknowledged because you are bringing it back to such a broad group of children.

The witnesses are all most welcome. I thank them for being here. Not for the first time, the opening statements have raised serious questions around the whole management of the SNA and SET system and how that is managed at a national level. This is one of the things we were reminded about in recent days where we had tampering with the system for the summer programme, when the portal was only open for six or seven days as opposed to a couple of months in the past.

I saw that as almost an attack on schools and the way they were trying to manage themselves and their resources, and trying to provide the best for the students they were entrusted with. The witnesses' asks are very similar. They are asking for what is right in order to have the best and most efficient education system one could want.

I was taken by something that the INTO said about the potential decline in enrolments on the SET allocation. What is the basis for that consideration?

The drop-off in enrolments in the past number of years has seen a cut in the mainstream teacher allocation in mainstream classrooms. We face into a summer where we are looking at approximately 498 teacher positions being lost. It is important that we recognise that this loss is leading to massive strain in the system on principals who are trying to get qualified teachers in front of classes every day. Also, those classes are more overcrowded than they were before because the drop-off of teachers leads to more overcrowded classrooms in our schools. Our budget campaign is for 1,000 more teachers and we ask for that because we cannot stand idly by while the system is not acting on the drop-off in teacher numbers at primary level. That speaks to our ask for one SET to one mainstream classroom. Studies and research show that well-thought-out, well-implemented co-teaching and team teaching models support children from disadvantaged areas and also children with additional needs. It is imperative that we look at the human resourcing of our classrooms going into the future. It is a no-brainer for us in the INTO to ensure that the bodies in our classrooms are qualified primary school teachers because they are the ones who can and do know and learn about their pupils over time. That understanding of our pupils supports their learning and ensures that they see success in their education. If we could put a SET in with a mainstream class teacher, planning, co-teaching and ensuring those children were getting the best education possible, it would be a win for the system. It would support inclusive education. It would ensure that children from disadvantaged backgrounds or who had special or additional educational needs had a fully qualified teacher in front of them at all times.

We see it in primary schools. Too often, if there is a substitute teacher needed, they are pulled from the SET allocation of that school. That cannot continue. What we are doing there is pulling away teachers from our most vulnerable children, so it really is imperative that this committee consider this one-to-one SET-to-mainstream classroom teacher request.

One of the things Mr. Creedon suggested was that there was an upsurge in the number of children presenting with complex needs. Therein lies the need for the Department to be more mindful of what the allocations should be for the next school term.

The SET allocation model is based on three pillars: 25% of the allocation is based on enrolment, 68.5% is based on the educational needs profile and 6.5% is derived from the HP deprivation index. What we are missing there is the voice of the principal and of the teacher on the ground and trusting our principals and teachers to determine the needs of the children in front of them. There is a complexity of need, as the Deputy spoke to, in our classrooms now - in our mainstream classrooms and in our special classes - that is going unsupported because the voices of the principal and teacher are not being listened to by the Government and the NCSE. Allocations need to be reflexive into the future so that there is a baseline of allocation for a school. Absolutely, use your data for that. However, behind that we need to recognise that schools are always in a flow state. There are daily changes in our schools, classrooms and children's lives. We need to trust our principals and teachers in the professional decisions they make to look for support for those children because, right now, principals and teachers do not feel like the system is listening to them, and that is a worry.

I thank the witnesses for coming in and for their opening statements. When a topic like this comes up, I sometimes feel that we could spend a full session with each of the organisations individually and still learn an awful lot from it. As other speakers have mentioned, it is good that there is consistency across all of the witnesses in terms of the ask. We all know that there is an awful lot of goodwill across the whole education sector and that people on the ground take huge responsibility on themselves and are invested in the job they do, the school and in every element of it.

Many of the witnesses mentioned upskilling and ongoing training without increasing the workload. I know that the INTO is looking for 1,000 new primary school teachers. Mr. Lambert mentioned that the Government needed to fund more SNA posts if the overall number of 26,000 SNA posts is insufficient. When we in this committee were trying to come up with a set time in which to allow students to have their school lunches rather than rushing through and doing 101 other tasks, the Department was talking about the new curriculum, how it was a bit more dynamic and how each individual school could make its own decision on how it allocated time and, if necessary, make up time at a later stage. Is slowly increasing the number of staff the only way for ongoing training to be delivered to staff without overloading them? Is that the only solution to this or is there another way of providing the ongoing professional development that the witnesses are talking about?

I can speak to why we asked for one day non-contact time in schools for planning around inclusion and special needs. Principals do not have time at the moment to sit with their whole schools, look at their own contexts, and build and plan for inclusion and SEN across the whole school. Their time is now taken up so much with administrative and bureaucratic processes that they are not getting to effect their own visions within their schools as the educationalists they wanted to be when they stepped into the role of principal. That is why we think that, without the non-contact time we currently do not have in primary schools, there is no time for collaboration at primary level, as my colleagues in TUI and ASTI spoke of. We are a real outlier in the education systems out there when we do not provide time for teachers to sit with one another and plan out for the new curriculum, special education and inclusion. Besides that, we are not giving time for our principals to sit with the teachers, drive that vision and direct that for them. For us, the 3% or 6 days we are looking for would be critical going forward. Otherwise, we will continue in the cycle of piecemeal initiatives coming into the school, principals with very little time trying to drive those initiatives, with some of them working and some not, dependent on the context, and principals not being given time to sit down within their own local contexts and solve that.

Either you try to not have sitting days in schools for those days or increase staff slowly. Are these the only options?

The Deputy referenced initial teacher education. Certainly, things are improving in that context, particularly with the new regulation coming into effect in September that will mean all those engaging with initial teacher education will have to do their placement in a special education setting. The placement is an observation rather than a practising one, which is appropriate given the level of training they will be involved in. Great work is being done in the initial teacher education setting. Good programmes around special education are being delivered.

With regard to the release days, we are expecting people to go into packed schools. When we go to all of the stakeholder meetings, it is well recognised that there is a massive burden on the schools. If we want to deliver well in our settings, we need to provide people with the skill set. The Deputy is much younger than I am. I came out with zero background training in special education. All the training I had in that regard amounted to maybe two or three lectures. Yet, I could still be in a school delivering every day and expected to deliver to students with, at times, very complex needs. I am not just talking about an education context in that regard but, rather, the emotional and psychological needs of those students and the level of training I have been given. I would need to be upskilled. We want our teachers to have the confidence to be able to do the job. We need to give them sustained and appropriate high-quality training. However, if we are going to value that training, we must give them release days. I know there is a need to protect the students’ tuition time, but do we do that at the cost of not providing the training to the experts who are meant to be going in there to deliver to the students? We need to give them the skill sets.

One of the positive initiatives from the point of view of our practitioners on the ground is the educational therapy service that has been rolled out in the special schools. I have talked to colleagues who have worked under that and they have said it is excellent. They have learned and been able to garner from the professionals on the ground. When I asked them how it was working, they said it was excellent and the professionals were giving them great advice. However, they stated that the difficulty is with the lack of time for collaboration. I asked them when such collaboration happens, to which they replied that they try do it in their own time. There is no release time or opportunity factored into this excellent service that is being provided in special schools. That service will be extended by the end of this year to all special schools but there is no provision of time for essential collaboration. Collaboration is the byword for success in education. We need to be providing that time for training. We need to ring-fence it. We should not expect parents to be doing it in their own time. I agree with the Deputy. It is not about the money; it is about time. How can we say to someone to go to the education centres, which are running excellent courses, but that they must do it in their own time, leave their children behind and get someone to mind them? It is just not practical.

The witnesses are welcome. I thank them for their opening statements. I have been putting it to the Department for a while about a plan for inclusive education because I feel that it is almost ad hoc. Every year, we are responding to crises. Come September, some children will have no school place, some will have an inappropriate school placement and others will be travelling long distances and passing their local school to get to another school and criss-crossing. The amount of money being spent on transport is outrageous. While huge investment is going into special education, it is not being spent in the best way it could be to achieve an inclusive education system.

I am interested in what Mr. Creedon mentioned about having a SET teacher along with the mainstream teacher. I spoke to John Boyle briefly last week at Buswells Hotel, who made reference to the same example. I forget the country in question. Was it Belgium?

Yes, it was Belgium.

I am interested in that method and whether it is used in other countries, as well as any other methods being used towards inclusive education in other jurisdictions. I am a little bit concerned in this regard. While special classes are excellent and provide the support students require, they are a bit like segregation in a way. We want inclusive education. If they are well managed, the students will be integrated into the mainstream regularly. That is not always happening, however. Part of that could be due to class sizes. Class size must be addressed because we have the largest class sizes in Europe. It would benefit all students. There are many students who may have certain needs but do not require a special class. They still require assistance but they cannot get it in a large class. I am interested in that model Mr. Creedon spoke about and any other models of education.

The Senator is absolutely correct when it comes to class size. We spoke of universal design for learning, UDL, earlier. It works well when there is a pupil-teacher ratio of 15:1. It becomes difficult with the kinds of classes we have with ratios of 25:1 and 30:1. UDL breaks down after that point. Class size is a huge issue. Like I said in the opening statement, this is no longer just a mainstream class issue; it is an inclusion issue as well. If we can bring those pupil-teacher ratios down, it will benefit many learners, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and children with additional and special education needs.

That is why we want to look at ensuring there is one SET teacher to one mainstream classroom because it ensures the ratio is brought down significantly. For example, if there are 19 or 20 pupils in a classroom with both the mainstream classroom teacher and a SET teacher working continuously for 182 days, the outcomes for those pupils will be significant. The types of models that work well - ones the OECD speaks highly of - are highly effective models that build collaborative practice into their systems. Ireland is already highly effective without such a model, so imagine what we would look like if we had it.

These high-quality, effective education models look at collaboration and collaborative teaching practices like co-teaching or team teaching. They work when they are well planned out and the structures are put in place. Teachers must know their role and the proper funding and resourcing must be in place. Human resourcing is important but the material resourcing behind it is also critically important. It is about a proper allocation of teachers into classrooms to support that drop in the pupil-teacher ratio. We welcome any further discussion around having one SET teacher per mainstream classroom.

We must also ensure there are proper resources and time available to those teachers to plan and organise their classroom each year. That brings me back to these six days of non-contact time. It amounts to 3% of the school year. That is what we are looking for. Currently, Ireland has approximately 900 hours of contact time, while the EU average is approximately 770 hours. We are teaching at approximately 17% more contact time with our pupils than most other countries in the EU. We have four school closure days next year for the enactment of the curriculum and we are asking for one further school closure day in order to plan for inclusion. We want the system to show us that it is taking this issue seriously and, like I said, trusting us as professionals to develop inclusive practices in our schools.

What is common across the board is reducing class sizes and providing more time for planning and collaboration between members of staff, including SNAs. SNAs need to be a part of that planning process to work out exactly what a student needs. They may not have been to date.

Absolutely. It is positive from our perspective that we all have common goals despite the fact that we are coming from different perspectives. It is clear there is common purpose to build an education system that is the best for all children within it, one that is inclusive and supportive for every child regardless of their need. It is even more heartening to see that picked up by colleagues.

We are talking about time. In ways, there is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in this regard. The Senator mentioned the ad hoc nature of the system. It is about eating into and eliminating that ad hoc reactive approach. We all work in reactive environments. Trade union officials and politicians certainly do. It is that type of nature. If we do this properly and put the necessary investment the sector needs in place, and bear in mind we are talking about a sector that in many cases is impacted by shortcomings in other sectors, such as health, mental health supports, the lack of health and social care professionals, therapists and so on, the time will be made up elsewhere because we will not be reacting on the ground to situations. We will not have staff going out injured because there has been an incident where a child became dysregulated and accidentally hurt someone.

We need to invest.

I thank all of the witnesses for coming today and for their presentations.

I have two questions. I will start by saying that the Minister was before this committee recently and talked about the amazing results in education compared with OECD figures. She put that down to Government investment, but Government investment is actually among the lowest in the OECD. It is important to put it down to the staff, namely, the teachers, SNAs and the whole school. As has been said, class contact time is longer, despite the constant obsession with the holidays. There is no queue to become a teacher, by the way.

Maybe Ms Quirke would like to answer my first question regarding the recent attack on SNAs. I agree that it caused a lot of worry, but it also led to some welcome developments and change. I do not know whether she agrees. It sparked people into action. Immediately, there were protests by parents and schools. Everyone in these Houses was attending SNA briefings. It showed the appreciation people had for SNAs and how they would hold onto them for dear life. Some of the job security measures were mentioned in the briefing. The Government needs to take note. It will not mess around with SNAs lightly. What are Ms Quirke’s thought in this regard?

It was great to see such support. The workforce development plan has been ongoing for over two years now and it is welcome to see redeployment and more security. Everyone here is talking about inclusion, but they are all coming at it from a teacher’s perspective. From an SNA point of view, when a child comes into the school, I would like us to look at where that child will be when they are 22. What can we do to get them to that stage? That is lacking in our education system. One size does not fit all. Special classes are great and they work well when the trained staff are in them, but the nearest school may not be the best school for a student. It may not be able to offer them what they need.

We need to look at the students first. We cannot blame teachers or staffing. Everyone cannot be all-round trained for everything. Children need to be in the right setting. We need to be taking care of them and giving them every opportunity. Let us see where they can go and let us do what we can to the best of all our ability to get them there.

The other question I have is around post-primary education. I have been attending meetings for years on the issue of additional needs education. The issue of children falling off a cliff once they go into secondary school has come up again and again. In my area, there was a huge campaign for autism and neurodivergent school places in primary education. There is no doubt that it has had some success in applying pressure in that regard. However, speaking as a former secondary school teacher, there is absolutely nothing in a lot of secondary schools.

I have two questions for the witnesses from the two unions. First, second level education is an ableist system, with the big, grand prize of the leaving certificate and the points that we see every year at the end of it. I agree with all of the witnesses’ proposals for investment in training and so on, but one thing that is not mentioned is the number of classes needed. While I agree with integration, there is a lot of integration at secondary level. Everyone is just thrown into a class, no matter their ability. We need more specialised classes where people can get the specialised help they need. How many classes do the witnesses think should be in a secondary school? I have heard a suggestion that there should ideally be one for every school year, for example.

My second question relates to the curriculum, which has not been mentioned at all. There are students who are autistic leaving secondary school with no education. They have been sitting in classrooms getting nothing because they cannot do the mainstream leaving certificate. I have spoken to parents whose daughter progressed and there is still no introduction of the new senior cycle curriculum. I do not know whether that is now being properly implemented. Those are the two issues I wish to raise.

I am not sure what the number of specialist classes should look like. I am not sure it should necessarily be one per year because it depends on the intake and the needs of the students. A specialist place is suitable for some and not for others. Obviously, the system would like to have full integration to enable students to attend all mainstream schools but because of the complexity of need, that is not always practicable. Where practicable and possible, it can be facilitated. Obviously, we also want to enable students in a specialist class to engage at the level to which they can be supported in a mainstream class.

We are using the terms “specialist classes” and “mainstream classes”, but these are all terminologies of exclusion and categorisation. None of that is welcome. Education should be education for all. That is what inclusion is about. If we talk about education to five different people, they will all come up with a different definition. I do not know how many classes there should be. Certainly, I know the roll-out of the L1 and L2 programmes at both junior and senior cycle has been welcome. They are working effectively. In that context, I welcome the roll-out of the senior cycle redevelopment. There is the L1 and L2 co-ordinator for that.

One of the deficits in that regard - this is something that came up during the week as I was speaking to practitioners on the ground - is that specialist schools did not get that allocation. This must be addressed. Specialist schools should, of course, be given that co-ordinator role if they are rolling out the L1 and L2 programmes at senior cycle.

Another thing I am cognisant of in the context of specialist classes - the Deputy will probably know about this from her area - is that there will be a situation where a school will gain a reputation as being the school that caters. The burden is more heavily carried by some schools than others. That is a situation that needs to be addressed.

I am up next in the speaking roster. I thank the witnesses for their opening statements and engagement so far. My first question is for Ms Quirke. Yesterday, our committee had a worthwhile technical briefing with the Department and the NCSE about the workforce plan and the new circular. One of the things I honed in on was this requirement that came in under pay talks over the years for SNAs to do additional days of work in the year. It usually ends up being during July and August. I was a teacher, and we have other former teachers on this committee. You would be hard pushed to find teachers during July and August. Maybe they are coming back and getting themselves ready by the end of August, but most teachers are not in the school in July. SNAs have to be there, however. We heard from the Department that SNAs would not be expected to do cleaning work, cover books or any of that stuff. I made the point that protection, professional respect and status would only be given to SNAs when those 12 additional days - we had better call them hours - were aligned with the school year so that when it got to July, they would not be in the school. They should be at home or on holidays at that time. Does Ms Quirke have a view, as an SNA and a union representative, as to how that could function? Will she provide examples of how it has been abused over the years?

The Cathaoirleach might mean the month of June.

Yes.

The new workforce plan has covered it well. I work in a secondary school, and always have. We have always been there for SEN kids if they are doing an exam. That is important, and we would like to be there for them. I do not think any SNA objects to that. However, SNAs were brought in and asked to do cleaning and caretaking jobs. They were kept until the last day of June. There were no students in the building or relevant work to be done. We were not working on student plans or anything relevant to our role. That is where it was being abused because it was in the contract that we had to be available for the month of June.

Teachers do a hard job all year, but so do SNAs. By the time the end of May comes around, be it in a secondary or primary school, SNAs are exhausted and burned out. We are on the same level as them. It is only fair. We do longer hours than those SNAs working in primary schools. In an adjacent feeder school, primary school SNAs often finished before me.

It causes consternation, frustration and bitterness in people. A person does not feel appreciated or respected if he or she is sitting in a building with no students and he or she is a special needs assistant. That SNA is there for the care needs of students.

I wish to ask Mr. Creedon about English as an additional language, EAL, which comes under the SET allocations and is counted within them. If we go on a slight geopolitical tangent for a moment, an agreement was signed overnight between Iran and the United States and there is ongoing work to end the war in Ukraine. It is the war in Ukraine that I want to hone in on because, overnight, schools across Ireland took in many children. In Lisdoonvarna in my county of Clare, the population increased fourfold across a six-month period. The way schools stepped up was incredible. They were under savage pressure but rose to the occasion. Cloakrooms that had not been used for years were kitted out as classrooms. Everything changed. However, those schools have become very dependent on SET, SNA and EAL allocations based on an enrolment that doubled across a few months. The Department keeps telling us that there will be no cliff edge. The term “cliff edge” was in a few of the witnesses' opening statements. Has the INTO concerns about how this could collapse if there is some agreement reached in the coming months? The protection that Ukrainians have in Ireland runs on a 12-month basis and is renewed every March. It is quite conceivable that this war could end midway through the next school year and many, though not all, of the children will go home and the whole system we have built up will collapse quite quickly.

To speak to EAL is to speak to the whole population of migrant children who are present in our schools every day. To our mind, EAL is a hugely important piece of the learning that they take part in daily. It goes back to the very simple matter of ensuring that our classes are of a size where those children and their needs are identified and support is continued over time. Many of these children live in communities where their first language is their home language and English will always be their second language. They may always need that support in schools going forward. If we see a cliff edge in EAL support, it will be quite worrying.

To combat that, I will go back to the allocation of one SET to one mainstream classroom. If a teacher has a classroom ratio of 19:1, they are able to identify those children as having an additional requirement for English and can work with them in that classroom. The teacher does not need to withdraw them. Team teaching and co-teaching are so well developed that, through immersive teaching and being immersed in the English language, children can stay with their peers in their classroom with the extra teacher and build on their ability in English. Withdrawal for EAL is needed from time to time but immersing those children in English language learning in the classroom, with proper supports, funding and the requisite number of teachers, is something that we are keeping a very close eye on.

I thank the witnesses for their opening statements.

I am particularly interested in the closure of early intervention classes around the country. That is having an impact. It is not necessarily impacting on secondary schools, although I wonder if it will if there has not been intervention early, for example, before primary school. It affects primary schools but also has a knock-on effect at post-primary school and on how young people are able to access the curriculum. I have been in contact with a number of people who are very concerned by the closure of early intervention classes. Such classes have been very successful for the children and young people who have accessed them, but now there is that threat. What do our witnesses think the impact of that would be?

Early intervention has been shown to be really important for children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds or have additional or special educational needs. The withdrawal of early intervention from the education system is very worrying. We see it each year when our junior infants come to primary school. We are blind as to their needs because the data is not transitioning from the early years sector into the primary sector. That data in the primary sector is trickling into post-primary.

We should be looking at early intervention in early years settings, and that needs to be funded by the Department of children. That data collection needs to be maintained and the supports around those children carried forward into their primary school education. There is a real worry that, when those children come into our schools, there is a period of regression because the data and supports do not come with them. This means that our teachers, in overcrowded classrooms of 25 to 30 children, are trying to figure out the child’s needs and how to support them when there already is information available on that child in the early years settings but it just has not been brought forward to the primary setting. We need to look at building a system of data collection for our children as they progress through their education.

We spoke to our principals about this and asked what they would like in terms of data collection over time. They just wanted to stop the duplication, with the same information being added over and over for the same supports. They are constantly having to provide duplicated information to the system to try to get supports for the children in their schools. They said that if there was a proper data collection system, they would sit down in September every year to input the data without any bother and update it over time. It is really important that we look at that data collection piece and the transition of data through the different education sectors from early years into primary and from primary into post-primary.

Well done to Fórsa for all of the work it has been doing for SNAs and others in the education sector. I have been a member of our school completion programme branch for a very long time. I have a sticker for school secretaries on the back of my laptop.

When the ballot goes out, if it is not accepted, what will the fallout for the workforce development plan, the contract and the circular be? I presume that the workforce plan and the circular will just go ahead, but the contract is the problem. What is the fallout? What will be the next steps?

The workforce plan is a very comprehensive document. It bleeds into a lot of different areas. There are elements where it looks to make contractual change to the contracts that SNAs hold. That can only be done by negotiation and agreement. If it is not accepted, the contracts cannot change. That will affect a number of elements within the plan. In terms of where it will go, we will look to re-engage and try to move things on. It has already been two and half years and 55 painstaking meetings of trying to get this to a point where we could put it to members and believe there was reasonable change that was beneficial to them in it. I am not sure if the patience is there in the sector to go again and do another process like that.

We do not want to pre-empt the outcome of a ballot, but we would hope that our engagements with our members are pointing out things in a way that we believe they will see the benefits in this and vote to accept it. There is a recommendation from our division in that vein. However, we would need to be very clear that if the outcome is to accept this, then the clarity, consistency, respect and recognition narrative that has been put about for the past couple of years has to come into play in reality. We heard commentary earlier about June and things like that. We have to make sure that this means there is no more abuse of the provisions that are there.

As to the Deputy's point about the number of different areas we operate in, I spoke earlier about the sector and colleagues have given the outline of where we want to go and what we want to include. We want a sector that is inclusive of all children and all additional needs. That does not mean just putting them in the same premises, but making sure that they are getting the supports they need to thrive. Consistency, stability and structure are needed, but they are not there. It is very ad hoc.

We also need ambition, and that cannot just be to get by and do the bare minimum. It has to be to lead by example and provide the best opportunities for students in the system. They are our future leaders. They are the country's future. We have to give every child the best opportunity to excel. We have to move away from competing needs and pitting one child against the other. Yes, there are varying levels of need out there, but the child who looks to be performing well or have developed coping mechanisms and be able to regulate because of a small bit of intervention, either by the SET or SNA, cannot afford to have that taken away and regress just because there is another need elsewhere.

We need a system with the ambition to resolve that.

Very well said.

Now we will have a second round of questions, with three minutes per member on this occasion.

I will continue on this discussion with Mr. Lambert. The most positive step I have taken from the recent announcement is that not more than one post will be lost in a single school year and schools with only one SNA post will not lose it. That is fantastic. How do the union members feel about the new plan? It is important for the Department to outline how it will implement the circular to determine allocations in practice. Does Mr. Lambert think the wording is too vague? That is what I was a bit worried about because it leaves the door open for the Department to interpret narrowly or liberally, depending on available funding. Am I just cynical or was the wording intentionally open-ended? I would love to hear what Mr. Lambert thinks.

I am an ex-public servant and someone who has been around circulars pretty much all my working life. They are always vague and open to interpretation. The Department has, in this instance, helpfully provided a guidance document which provides a lot of clarity and drills down into the detail.

In terms of the membership, we have had engagements up and down the country. We are having online engagements. There is a lot of apprehension and a lot of concern. That comes from the history of the role and how it has evolved over time and the announcement of Circular 30/2014 back then, with very little negotiation or engagement and very little input on behalf of our members. They are therefore right in many ways to be apprehensive. You cannot take that away from them. We believe very strongly that the new provisions and the guidance document provide us enough to be able to make sure that it is applied consistently and appropriately throughout the sector. There is no doubt, however, that there will need to be significant investment from the Department not only for ourselves but also for teaching colleagues to make sure there is enough training, enough literature and enough time for them to understand what is proposed and, hopefully, what will be agreed. It is a big step forward. There are huge improvements in consistency in terms of the allocations and the loss of only one post in any given year. We all have to accept that needs in the system can fluctuate and change. Going back to some of the earlier points, we need a system that develops a need profile that travels with the student from early years into primary and secondary and onwards into third level, and also on into employment because the supports are not there for people who may go through our education system. That will be done only by joined up thinking and a plan where it is consistently implemented and there is absolute clarity for all stakeholders from the very beginning to the very end.

On the SEN co-ordinator role, there is no such role in primary school, I take it. Is that correct? I undertook this role myself in a secondary school some years ago and at the time I had a special duties post. There were different names; they changed over the years. Even at that stage we felt that it should have been an A post position or an assistant principal position because of the amount of work. Nobody wanted to undertake that role because it was so difficult and there were so many different elements to it. It is disturbing that that has not changed, that it is still not recognised and that the time it requires is not given. I had an understanding principal, and the deputy principal had held the role before me so she really understood how much was involved in the role. They did give as much leeway as possible, but it was very hard to do. I do not know how even primary schools are managing without a role there. That is something we definitely support - more hours for it at secondary school level and a post created at primary school level.

Again, it is falling back on the principals in our schools to manage the overall duties and workload associated with special educational needs and additional needs education in our primary schools. They are supported by AP posts, but it is predominantly our principals who take on that burden, and they are swimming in a huge amount of workload at the moment. For us, the quality of that provision is now something we need to be careful about because we have overworked principals who are trying to juggle so much and so many initiatives every year, enactment of a new curriculum, the behaviours of concern document around which staff now need to be trained up and the new Relate model coming from the NCSE, which is a real culture-changing document. Our principal is trying to manage all this in the inclusion space. We feel that the addition of a SENCo role is critical to see successful inclusion in Irish primary schools. A SENCo would certainly take away some of the burden. Of course, our principals will always have that overview and ensure that things will work out and progress properly in their schools, but a SENCo can take on some of that administrative and bureaucratic load from our principals. Again, however, they require the time in our schools to do that. A teaching SENCo will teach from 9.20 a.m. to 3 p.m. and then will be tasked with what is a significant administrative load. We should take lessons from our neighbours in Northern Ireland, where the learning support co-ordinator role very quickly became administrative and bureaucratic and actually took them away from supporting and advising teachers and their principals and schools around inclusive education. A SENCo role is critical, but the training around it and the actual role itself and how it will be set up in schools need to be carefully considered with a lot of consultation.

I am up next again. I want to go back to Mr. Creedon about EAL because I fear this cliff edge that the Department tells us about will not happen but I am not fully convinced about the way it ramped up so quickly and I think it could scale back as quickly. The current data collection model for EAL means that children born in Ireland entering junior infants will not qualify for EAL. I am specifically referring to children who were born in Ireland, have lived their whole lives in Ireland, are five years of age and whose mom and dad do not speak English. They are coming from a home environment where they might pick up only a few words from the iPad or the TV and they may or may not have been in preschool, but they are effectively coming in where English is a brand-new language and they are in a junior infant classroom unsupported. I want to know the INTO's view on that and the way this is currently configured.

It is a symptom of the reactiveness of the system. It took a war for us to react around EAL and to try to put some form of provision in there. The provision we have made is the criteria A and B, which dictate that the child must come from a migrant family or that EAL supports are put in place to react to their need as they come into the country instead of being proactive about the supports we should already have in place to support our migrant pupils. It speaks more broadly to the reactiveness of the systems, including the education system at large. At all times - we saw this in the summer programme recently and in the SNA debacle - we are reacting instead of sitting down and proactively figuring out what needs to happen in our schools, and EAL is another symptom of that.

I briefly want to squeeze in a question to Mr. Conneely. He spoke about teachers being overstretched and being expected to have expertise they do not have. My experience is quite similar to Deputy Ní Raghallaigh's, training up in Mary I, finding myself in a classroom and the principal dropping in a file saying, "This child has come into your class." When the principal leaves, you probably swivel around and google what this means because we are not prepared. Is that very prevalent in teaching? Are teachers being prepared or supported enough with CPD?

We are not quite as you frame it, a Chathaoirligh, but it is prevalent in that every teacher now is a teacher of special needs. You are in a classroom, you have to deal with these students and, as we said earlier, these teachers have not been trained. Everybody here is in favour of inclusion.

If I may take us somewhere else a little, the Department needs to realise that investing money in inclusion will save the country and the economy money downstream. Any investment in education will save money. This is a problem.

These teachers need to be trained. They are in there and want to provide for the students in front of them and to be able to get the best for them. If they are not trained in that area it can be difficult. Even matters such as how they deal with a student with a particular need in the classroom is not straightforward. They are given a few pointers here and there. It is quite common.

I thank Mr. Conneely.

I am interested in the SENCO role and how that would look in both primary and post-primary school. Obviously, it needs to be paid. We cannot ask someone to do something for nothing so it has to be paid. How much would that be, roughly? Is it assistant principal, AP, and all those different things? Does it look like it is going to be admin only with no teaching involved? People have talked about training - Mr. Conneely just talked about training - and the situation is the same with SNAs. A huge amount of training and upskilling needs to happen. Would that SENCO have a role for CPD on campus and on site for teachers and SNAs or is it seen differently? The responsibility for a SENCO is so large with very complex needs, particularly at second level. When maybe the person has not trained in special education, how would that be? The SENCO's role in that case would be so important to make sure there is upskilling in schools. How they would have time for teaching? To take that burden away from the principal, it would then be given to that person. How would that look in both primary and secondary school? I am sorry there is very little time.

A conversation and meaningful engagement would need to take place. It would not be the engagement we have had in the past, but meaningful engagement with the stakeholders, that being the teacher unions. That role would need to be defined.

How does Mr. Conneely see that looking?

We would defer to our teachers who are the experts on the ground before we would adopt a position on that. I am not a special education teacher so I do not particularly have a view as to how it might be formed.

I might go to Ms Howard.

What that might look like on the ground will definitely depend on the cohort of students in the school, the level of need and the number of students attending the school. For example, there are post-primary schools that may have three or four special classes in the school and other schools that have one. That does not negate the fact there is still significant need within the school community because there will be emotional behaviour and other needs that emerge. What that might look like would definitely depend on the population within the school and the needs that are presenting in the school. There will have to be some kind of metric that will say, "This is the bar that is being reached". It would need to be piloted in a way that would allow the system to determine whether what has been given to a SENCO by way of resources is sufficient to do the job they are doing, given the level of need decided.

Deputy Cummins talked about the role and I want to mention training. I am never a fan of the train the trainer piece, where somebody goes out, comes back in and brings that back into the school. I do not know how appropriate that is in the context. It depends on the levels of support. Within the area that we are talking about, trauma-informed practice is training that is absolutely needed in most schools. That needs to be done by people who are experts on the ground.

Could the SENCO not be that expert?

It depends on whether they have that skill, or have that training themselves or are adequately trained. Sometimes our SENCOs are people who have the postgraduate qualification in special education but they are not experts in all things. This is a very diverse and broad area so they cannot possibly be experts in all things. We should not be capping it or limiting it to them.

We see it as a critical support for our principals in maintaining a high quality of provision of special education and inclusive education.

Would it be administration or teaching and administration?

It could be a mix of both. As my colleague said, we would need to sit down and really tease out that role because primary and post-primary differ. It would be important to have a robust conversation around that.

That concludes our questions from members. On behalf of the committee, I sincerely thank each one of the witnesses and the organisations they represent for their engagement. I thank all the front-line staff in schools as we near the end of this school year - the other one is not too far away. I thank all of them for their engagement here today and for the opening statements. I thank the secretariat as always, the technical team and the ushers.