Access to special needs assistants 'like lottery'
Education Minister Ruairí Quinn has come under fire this afternoon from parents of special needs children who accused him of misleading the public on the issue of SNA allocation.
The Alliance Against Cuts in Education called Minister Quinn's claim that every child who needed a special needs assistant had one, a "brazen lie".
The group claims that almost 1,000 special needs students are set to lose the support they require.
Resource teacher in Lucan Siobhan Rea said that just because children had access to an assistant, this did not mean their needs were being met.
"Access shared between two or three children in a classroom means exceptionally little one-to-one support," she said.
"It's a meaningless word, that word 'access'. It's just a buzzword really, the same as saying I have access to the lottery just by buying a ticket."
