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

We had an opportunity to debate this last Thursday evening with the Minister. We need to understand the huge administrative burden on teaching principals at primary school, being leaders of education within the schools, having to deal with the board of management and parents, as well as all of the things that can go wrong in the building. One of our recommendations was that they have one day a week that is committed and dedicated to all of those administrative burdens and to dealing with the Department as well. They could get a substitute teacher for that one day a week. This measure would cost about €10 million. The idea is to have a supply panel set up where schools could be clustered, maybe with five in a cluster, which would make life much better for the whole school community.