Ms Patricia Sheehan:

Our position on reduced timetables is that every child enrolled in a school should attend for the full school day and the Department is seeking to put in place a robust set of guidelines that outline procedures to be followed by schools, which we expect will commence in the next school term in January. The issue of reduced timetables has not been reported, so we are not able to monitor use at this stage. The first step is that the guidelines are going to address that and there will be mandatory reporting by schools to the Tusla educational support service. We will then be able to monitor and ascertain their use and it is anticipated that it will reduce situations where it is being used inappropriately.

There have been consultations with stakeholders in that regard and, when they are completed, the guidelines will be finalised. There have also been consultations with the Traveller groups on this, and a draft of the guidelines was sent for feedback. Progress is being made on that and it is hoped it will be finalised before Christmas.