Ms Áine Lynch:

One of the things about which we would be very cautious is that the parent-student charter and the Ombudsman for Children's office are not seen as the answer to all issues relating to school boards of management. We will badly affect the powers of the office of the Ombudsman for Children and the parent-student charter if we try to use both of those mechanisms to fix all of the issues around school boards of management. That is a separate piece of work that needs to be looked and I would caution against that.

I would happily endorse Dr. Muldoon's assertion that it should be the student-parent charter. Parents would very much want the students at the forefront and centre of it and believe that it is their role to support them. It has been outlined how the different layers can be difficult for parents. Other colleagues of mine have recently been involved in looking at the child protection guidelines in schools and how they need to be revised in terms of Children First. In respect of the interplay between the Department of Education and Skills, Tusla and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in trying to make sure all of those things are put in place at the same time, the fact that children's issues are separated out over so many Departments is utterly frustrating and certainly not in the best interests of protecting children. It is really important that children's issues are kept in a cohesive way wherever we currently have them. Trying to pull back in situations where Departments have already separated out children's issues can be very difficult, but to start separating things out when children are clearly under the remit of one ombudsman will lead to further frustration for parents in terms of how they can manage certain situations. Children do not fit into nice packages so a complaint is rarely just an education issue. It often touches other areas of the child's life so it would be very frustrating for parents if they were constantly being knocked from pillar to post within the complaints system at ombudsman level as well because they experience this quite a lot before they even get there. I would caution against that as well.