Mr. Ken Fennelly:

I recognise what Deputy Daly is saying. To sound a note of balance and perhaps honesty, I talk to chairpersons of boards of management and principals on a daily basis during the week. I agree there are problems. I recognise what the Deputy is saying, namely, it is not all rosy in the garden across the country in terms of the running of boards of management. I recognise there is an issue with complaints procedures in terms of how parents' complaints are dealt with. When one goes through the whole procedure, it comes to a point where the board's decision is final and, if the parent is not happy with that, where does the parent go next? That is what the Deputy is saying and I recognise it is an issue. However, there is a whole range of issues around that as to how one would strike a balance for the next step and whether there should be a next step in order to be fair to all parties involved. I understand exactly where the Deputy is coming from on that.

The issue of training was raised. There are five modules of training for boards of management and we would do that across the country. There is a difficulty, however, which is that these are volunteers. I would love it to be the case that we had a situation like that for pensions, where there is compulsory training, including online training. However, we would have to literally drag people out of their houses in the middle of the night on winter nights to come to training, and to do that is very difficult. We cannot compel volunteers to do the training and the feedback from boards of management is that it is difficult to get people to attend. In the Church of Ireland, we have a very good turnout for training simply because people like to come along for an evening to meet others and to chat, and then go to a training session. That is in the culture and they like to do that. However, getting people to come to training is an issue, although I would like it noted that we are well resourced by the Department.

Senator Moran mentioned listing the membership of boards on websites, which is a good idea. An annual report goes to the parents association every year and the members of boards of management are mentioned on that.