Mr. John Boyle:

Deputy Lahart will be very familiar with the largest school in Ireland, where I was principal until last year. There are particular logistical difficulties for that school, with 1,600 children, 150 staff and God knows how many parents arriving there every morning. That is a case where there will have to be a staggered opening, particularly initially. It will not be possible to have a safe reopening on 1 September for a school of that size if all of those people turn up at the gate at the same time. Things will be different this year.

The Deputy asked about temperature testing. The guidance indicates that for very young children, it would not be worthwhile to do it because, on certain days in the winter, from the time they leave home until they get to school, their temperature could have gone up before suddenly falling back again. Any such measures will have to be done at entry. The key point in the guidance is: if in doubt, stay out. Parents will have to make sure that if their child is not feeling well or has any sign of a symptom, he or she does not come into school. Equally, staff will have to take the same approach.

Support for principals is a particularly big issue for us. With nearly half our schools having small numbers of teachers and teaching principals, we do not believe, in the early days of the school year, that a teaching principal will be able to give full consideration to his or her class for the five hours of the days, plus playground duty, and also be able to manage the safe opening of the school. We will have to get extra release days for those principals. We have been asking for a day per week for a long time and we are nearly there in some schools. The total cost of giving a day a week is €7 million. We do not necessarily need to have that in place immediately to deal with Covid but we will need a lot of days in September. We certainly can do the maths on that and get back to the Deputy.

When it comes to playground supervision and all the resources relating to the national return to work protocol, it is all about time. For example, the requirement for children to sanitise their hands will have to be done under supervision. How does one supervise the children coming in the door when half of the class have already gone up the stairs to their classroom? Equally, how can a teacher carry out the role of lead worker representative in a school if he or she is teaching all day? In the case of teaching principals and even administrative principals, they will be so focused on health and safety that there will have to be extra help and resources provided. We can get all of that costed.

Deputies O'Dowd and Lahart asked about how there will be verification of how individual schools are adapting to the new normal. The Health and Safety Authority will have a role to play in that. We hope the schools inspectorate, even though its members might not be health experts, can guide and advise schools in this regard. We are glad that they have said they will do so. However, there also will have to be HSA inspections. If they are happening in every other workplace, why should they not be done in schools? Our members, including teachers, special needs assistants, secretaries and caretakers, are as entitled to a safe workplace as every other worker.

Finally, there are teachers who are really anxious at the moment because they have underlying health conditions. There are many young female teachers who are pregnant and who are not clear as to whether they will be in jeopardy if they come back in September. The advice definitely will have to be clearer for those categories of school staff. At the moment, the guidance talks about, in the context of the ordinary office workplace, what should be done for people in the very high-risk category. However, those people in offices, who are, no doubt, doing great work, do not have to go into a class with 30 children and meet up to 30 parents in the day. These are things that must be clarified as soon as possible. If school staff cannot come back for those sorts of reasons, the principal and the board will need time to recruit replacements.