Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

At today's meeting, the joint committee will begin the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Education (Amendment) Bill 2015 and the general scheme of the Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill 2016. This is the first of two days on which witnesses will appear before the joint committee.

On behalf of the committee, I welcome all of the witnesses to the meeting. From the Department of Education and Skills, we have Mr. Martin Hanevy, Mr. Tom Deegan and Mr. Martin McLoughlin, from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, we have Mr. John Lohan and from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, we have Mr. Mark Bohan and Mr. Niall Mulligan. From the Office of the Ombudsman for Children, we have the Ombudsman, Dr. Niall Muldoon, Ms Nuala Ward, director of investigations, and Ms Róisín Webb, head of policy. From the Office of the Ombudsman, we have the Ombudsman, Mr. Peter Tyndall, and Mr. Tom Morgan. From the National Parents' Council, we have Ms Áine Lynch, CEO, and from the Irish Primary Principals' Network, IPPN, we have Mr. Seán Cottrell, CEO, Ms Maria Doyle, president, Mr. David Ruddy, the deputy president, and Ms Geraldine D'Arcy, research and publications manager. From the Special Needs Parents' Association, we have Ms Lorraine Dempsey and Ms Gina Grant, who are co-chairpersons. I thank all the witnesses for their written submissions which will go up on our website following today's meeting.

Given that we have so many witnesses, we will be limiting the amount of time for the oral presentations. I ask everybody to stick to a four-minute period. We will take one representative from each group to speak and then we will go to the members of the committee and to the other Deputies and Senators who have joined us, if they have any queries or questions. We will then come back to the witnesses again. We will have a busy few hours.

I draw the witnesses' attention to the fact that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to the joint committee here today. However, if they are directed by myself as chair to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or an entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. Any opening statement or other document submitted to the committee may be published on its website after the meeting.