Ms Anne McDonagh:

I will return to what I said in my presentation about the process, where we go through a process and when we talk to parents which might address some of the different things people said. Then I will go through the different questions people asked.

I will start at the end. With regards telling parents what we have decided, we do not decide, in Archbishop's House, what to do. As I said, we start at the beginning and we consult people at local level.

I will address the Ballyfermot issue because I know it is of concern to people here. In Ballyfermot information was released at an inappropriate stage and the first I knew of it was when I got telephone calls from very worried parents. They thought that their children were going to end up in large classes, and be separated from their friends. That happened before the boards of management got a chance to call the meeting and talk to parents about this matter, and exactly as the Deputy said, to discuss with parents the rationale and talk to them about the thinking behind it. The people in Ballyfermot - before the Archbishop's House ever heard about any re-organisation - the educational leaders in Ballyfermot got together. Therefore, the chairpersons of five schools, as there were at the time in 2008, met and employed a facilitator to talk about the future of education in Ballyfermot because they themselves decided that there were too many schools for the number of children. The chairpersons in the first instance met the facilitators. The first I heard of it was when I was asked whether I would come to a meeting where the principals would attend with a facilitator. These talks go back as far as that time. It was at local level that all this talk was going on because they had decided the schools were far too big for the number of pupils that were around. That is how the whole situation works.