A total of 1,101 redundancy applications in respect of Special Needs Assistants was received by my Department in the 12 months from January to December 2011. During that same period, 627 redundancy payments (totalling in excess of €4.9 million) were paid to Special Needs Assistants.
383 redundancy applications are currently being processed by the Redundancy Unit and payment in respect of those will issue as soon as possible. Up to the end of February 2012, a further 450 applications (approx) have been received. These applications will be processed in date order of receipt with some priority given to those SNAs who have not obtained alternative employment in a non teaching capacity in primary, secondary or community/comprehensive schools in the current school year.
Every effort is being made, within the resources available, to process redundancy applications as quickly as possible. Extra resources were assigned to the Redundancy Unit at the end of October 2011 to ensure that Special Needs Assistants that have been made redundant would have their claims for payment processed as quickly as possible.