Ms Lorraine Dempsey:

I wish to come back on the third point about the children who cannot come back. I know Deputy Ó Ríordáin was alluding to the children who are just not in school in the first place because they cannot find a school place or where school places have been very challenging, and they have faced expulsion even from special schools. A significant proportion of children would normally not qualify for the home-tuition scheme. This is another departmental scheme usually for children who either for medical needs or because they do not have a school place would qualify. We need to extend that kind of medical category provision for children where it is assessed as not being safe for them to come back in September for the winter period. Parents of children with extremely complex medical conditions or profound disabilities have stated that winter is already a challenge with the winter vomiting bug, the flu and all the other viruses that hit schools. These children can easily end up in intensive care in our paediatric hospitals. The concern is real. It is already lived experience with other viruses.

Other children are awaiting complex surgeries for conditions such as scoliosis or heart surgery where to get any viral infection at this stage would seriously delay their surgery dates. Some parents this summer simply will not risk their children's accessing the summer scheme despite their needing it or bringing them back into school in September because they do not want to jeopardise any medical pathways or appointments relating to surgery. The Department needs to look ahead at the likely number of children and the capacity of the different school environments to cater safely for their needs, taking into account the psychosocial aspect of children needing to mix.

It is complex and certainly needs to be looked at now. For this cohort or indeed for children receiving cancer treatment or immunosuppressed because of drug regimes they are on, we have no indication that work is under way to cater for their needs or indeed ramping up a school nursing programme to ensure there is a higher level of infection-control participation within special schools where there are very compromised children.