Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn has said there is no cut to the provision of teaching resources to children with special needs.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Mr Quinn said the Government was holding back a balance of 10% of next year's allocation of Special Needs teaching hours.
He said this was a very sensible provision based on unexpected demand for the service.
He said this 10% balance would be allocated in the autumn.
He said the intention was that children would get the hours that they require.
Yesterday, the Department of Education announced that it was allocating 90% of what schools need in terms of resource teaching hours for next year.
In a statement, it said this was to ensure that the department remained within a commitment on limits to employee numbers given as part of the EU/IMF bailout deal.
In the statement, it said that this would amount to a reduction of six minutes per hour, for each hour of resource teaching allocated to schools.
The department said this was an initial allocation.
The 10% allocation is being reserved to cater for further applications for resource teaching hours that are expected to come from schools in September.
The Department of Education says if this additional demand turns out to be less than expected, then the initial 90% allocation could be increased.
