O’Donovan welcomes extra SNA’s

Added December 4th, 2013

Fine Gael TD for Limerick, Patrick O’Donovan has welcomed the decision of the Government to recruit an additional 390 new Special Needs Assistants. The decision means that the cap on the number of SNA’s which was introduced by the last Government will be lifted and will bring the total number of SNA’s to almost 11,000.

Deputy O’Donovan said that this was another concrete example of how the Government had delivered to education. “In the last three months we have seen the announcement recruitment of an extra 1,200 teachers, there has been no changes to the pupil teacher ratio, we have been able to reintroduce the summer works scheme and the emergency works scheme and now we have this news of funds being provided to recruit 390 extra SNA’s.”

Patrick O’Donovan said that he was delighted with the decision of the Government to proceed with the recruitment and it showed that given that there continues to be difficulties in the economy, the Government had shown a very clear commitment to education and in particular to education for people with special needs.

It is expected that the Department of Education will provide details of recruitment for the additional SNA’s in the coming weeks.