Mr. Dalton Tattan:

I cannot say what impression they were under but we have been running this programme at primary level for a number of years and a ratio of 12:1 has been the standard. We have not changed that. Some months back, 72 schools initially agreed to participate. We put out a further request for expressions of interest and 210 primary schools wished to run the DEIS primary programme.

On the issue of the lack of guidance, I am disappointed to hear that a school does not wish to participate. We did issue guidance on this matter on Tuesday. This included a template which schools can use and adapt and some very helpful information on public health considerations. There is ongoing engagement with stakeholders and further guidance in this regard will be issued later today. All of that is informed by the advice we have been getting from the HPSC and our colleagues in the Department of Health. There is guidance. Obviously, we would have liked to have it out earlier than this week but it is there. We know many schools wish to proceed with summer provision and have been putting plans in place.

On school transport, this is again an issue of timing. We would have liked to have provided school transport in the normal way. Unfortunately, in order to do that, we need time to go through the procurement process. We were challenged this year because we were not advised that we could actually run this until early June Only in much more recent times have we known which schools would participate and the numbers and locations of children who wish to participate. We are making a grant available to parents. That will not answer the issues in every case but we hope it will be of some assistance in helping children to avail of summer provision.