Mr. Mark O'Connor:

I will touch on them and I thank the Deputy for his questions. One of the difficulties with going back in September, and this is an issue we have campaigned on for quite a number of years in Inclusion Ireland, is that there are approximately 109,000 children in supersized classes of 30+ in mainstream schools.

The pupil-teacher ratio shows a certain amount of what we need to know. Some 109,000, which is approximately 20%, of primary school pupils are in a class of 30 or more. That will be extremely difficult for the Department.

The Deputy mentioned resources. The only way to get those people back in is to have additional space for social distancing depending on what the public health guidelines are like at the time. That may entail additional teaching resources as well as physical space.

The guidelines for the summer programme or July provision only came out yesterday. As we mentioned already, the Department's previous communication has been characterised by mixed messages that have served to confuse parents. Inclusion Ireland has had contact from hundreds of parents who do not know how to go about the system and all of that.

I will deal with a final point before handing over to my colleague, Ms Dempsey. A number of children who are medically frail attend schools. As of two weeks ago when we asked the Department, no provision had been made for them. We urge it to extend the home-tuition programme to these children because a significant number of children will not be able to attend school in the absence of a vaccine or complete suppression of Covid-19, as Mr. Egan has stated.