Minister for Education and Youth Helen McEntee has confirmed that her department allocated 329 additional SNA posts in the 2024-25 school year to assist with the education and integration of Ukrainian students and those in the International Protection process.
Schools can apply for additional temporary Special Education Teaching hours and Special Needs Assistants where 10 or more such students are enrolled.
Schools are also eligible to apply for additional Special Needs Assistant (SNA) resources where 15 or more such students are enrolled, to a maximum of 25 teaching hours per week and a maximum of 3 SNAs on a temporary basis.
Minister McEntee says these allocations are reviewed on a term-by-term basis and resources provided are re-allocated if the Ukrainian or IPAS pupils change school locations.
The information was supplied following a parliamentary question from Independent TD Paul Nicholas Gogarty.
He had asked for details on the emergency supports available for schools that accommodate high percentages of IPAS and Ukrainian refugee children and that may also separately feature highly in the Pobal HP deprivation Index data.
A Dáil motion on the issue in April heard that 126 children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) had no school place at the start of this school year in September, and that the number of children accessing the Home Tuition Grant scheme due to the lack of an SEN placement has increased.
In response, Government has noted that it has been steadily building on the number of SNAs in the education system and that at the end of the 2024 school year there was over 22,000 SNAs in schools