Ms Lorraine Dempsey:

I got a letter from my daughter's special school the other day indicating the difficulties it has in terms of not having guidelines. It is similar to many letters parents have received in the past two weeks.

The other issue is opt-in from staff. Again, if one cannot provide the supports to staff to be able to opt in, such as paying them nearer the time they are working and providing childcare, thereby making it easier for them to say “Yes” and to opt in to the scheme safely, in the absence of guidelines many staff have fears around being able to opt in to the scheme.

To refer back to the numbers, only 200 out of 650 eligible schools have registered to provide the programme, but mainstream schools which have staff ready to go have been excluded from being able to offer it to children. Regarding the purpose of the school-based programme this year - it is not July provision but is called the summer programme - the intention of the Department is to reacquaint children with the school and learning environment and focus on transitioning to get them ready for school in September. For the most part, with consultations, it was saying that its preference was a predominantly school based programme.

To refer to statistics from last year, the majority of children have home-based programmes not because they work but because there are few schools that will engage in the extended summer programme. There has been a downward trend over the years of fewer schools engaging with it. There is a plethora of pre-existing issues with the schemes that Covid-19 has only compounded. Regarding the parents who are currently registered, I encourage parents to go to the www.education.iesummer provision programme website and to register their interest and follow the guidelines. Essentially, however, what we are all doing now is competing for a very small group of teachers and SNAs who have indicated in their different areas that they are available for home-based provision. Taking the 10,000 children who normally engage with these programmes and the children who do not find tutors in a normal year and promising that it will be extended out to over 20,000 children - indeed, yesterday the Minister stated that there is capacity for up to 24,000 children to avail of the scheme - if there is only a small pool of people who will be able to provide it, whether in school or in the home, those numbers are simply fanciful.

Everybody quotes Dr. Michael Ryan saying that speed trumps perfection and that we need to get things out despite mistakes. What we have found with the Department is that there has been no speed and there are President Trump-like exaggerations in numbers. Certainly, we are very far removed from any form of perfection for this summer. It is devastating for families.