The Minister for Education has confirmed that 975 extra special needs assistants will be allocated to schools from September to December of this year.
A total of 864 of the additional special needs assistants will be allocated to specific schools from today.
At a press conference this afternoon, Richard Bruton said that the parents of some children had not yet settled on specific schools, so the remaining 111 would be allocated at a later stage.
Mr Bruton also confirmed that the National Council for Special Education is currently setting the model in relation to allocating special needs assistants.
He said it hopes to have a more robust system next year, which would allow it to assess and predict the needs of schools and children in advance.
It comes as 8,000 special needs assistants who assist children with difficulties in schools decided to ballot for industrial action in a dispute over job security.
Their union, IMPACT, said that for the fourth year running, the Government had failed to announce special needs allocations before the end of the summer term.
An existing allocation process establishes how many special needs assistants will be assigned to individual schools for each academic year.
However, because there had been a delay in publishing the allocations, many SNAs still did not know if they would have a job in September.
In addition, because there was a possibility that they might have a job, they could not apply for redeployment.
Speaking at the ICTU conference in Belfast, IMPACT Deputy General Secretary Kevin Callinan said there was no practical reason why schools could not receive their figures in April or May to allow for efficient planning.
He said the union had raised the matter with the Department of Education "scores of times" - and warned that its failure to address the matter was raising the industrial relations temperature.
He said that because the department was not listening, they were proceeding with a ballot for industrial action to ensure that special needs assistants achieved the same job security as the national school teachers they work beside in the classroom.
He said the fact that this happens every year showed contempt for special needs assistants, and for the children, parents and schools they serve.
Earlier, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said two decisions were made by Cabinet this morning: the allocation of 975 special needs assistants for this September, and to ensure the decision on the allocation of SNAs takes place earlier.
He was responding to a question from Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil.
Ms McDonald said parents with children with special needs are at "wits’ end" because they do not know whether they will have access to SNAs.
Mr Varadkar said Cabinet has agreed that the decision on allocations will now be part of the normal estimates process, so allocations will be known long in advance.
Ms McDonald said she was pleased to hear there would be additional resources, however, she asked when people would know whether or not they have the support of an SNA and when would schools be able to tell special needs assistants that they have a job.
The Taoiseach said everyone will know this week where they stand.
